Epic Portions

Category: Competitive Eating

  • Haiti Relief hot dog eating contest turns tragic

    Its not every day a young boy dies at a hot dog eating contest.  Especially a 13 year-old middle school student at a supervised Boys and Girls Club charity event.  Although the choking death appears to be an accident, the Police are investigating.

    Call me a conspiracy theorist – but a few things in this story don’t  add up.   First, is that the food these 12 young contest participants were eating makes no sense.  Apparently this wasn’t a contest to see how many hot dogs the kids could eat.  Rather, it was contest was a “game” to see who could finish a cooked hot dog and bun covered with whipped cream.  What the HELL?  Not Fear Factor, but not Great Eats either [Hats off to our EPIE winner!].

    Additionally, and weirder, the contest itself was part of a charity event to raise money for the Haiti quake disaster.  That’s weird isn’t it?  An eating contest as a part of an event to raise money for poor people to get. . .food. Lastly, the prize for the kids upon finishing the whip-cream-dog. . .is described as some “candy.”  As in – you kids finish your whip-cream-dog and we will give you some candy.

    That is just creepy. Although,I suppose back in the halcyon days of middle school I might have had a go.

    The only good news is that the event reported raising $150 for Haitian Relief.  Come to think of it. . .that buys a lot of hot dogs.

  • The Double Dagwood

    A few months ago my buddy Steve brought me the news that his family had purchased a sandwich shop and they would feature a sandwich challenge known as The Double Dagwood.  This sounded like a fantastic idea to me because I was fresh off my destruction of the Bomber Breakfast and I was ready to take out another local eating challenge.  February 1st was their grand opening and I was there.  My production crew(production crew, HAHA) bailed on me so I was forced to travel all the way to Monroe to take the Double Dagwood Challenge at Doby’s Dagwoods all by my lonesome.  Could a one man force complete this task?  Was it a suicide mission?  Well, I guess you have to keep reading to find out.

    Upon arrival, I was shown the frame on the wall which displayed the current record holder, a man weighing over one hundred pounds more than myself who finished the sandwich in 21 minutes and 45 seconds.  I had seen pictures of the sandwich before on Steve’s cell phone but it did the sandwich no justice.  This thing was a monster.  The Double Dagwood is basically two of their already large Dagwood Sandwiches.  It’s a double decker version with pretty much every meat in the place, a couple different kinds of cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions and their special dagwood sauce, which is a honey mustard sauce.

    I took a seat and they began constructing the sandwich.  After a few minutes went by I needed to witness what I was about to eat.  Upon entering the kitchen, the familiar sandwich from the display was laid out on their prep area.  This thing was going to be rough.  I’ve eaten a lot of food before but nothing like this.  I think I’ve eaten around three pounds of food before, but it’s never been in the form of a sandwich and it was never timed.


    Finally, after adding more meat then they had thought was necessary, the sandwich went onto the scale.  I had expected a four pound sandwich but apparently the sandwich only weighs in at three, which chips and a pickle on the side.  Regardless of the one pound weight difference, this was still going to be tough.  They put the sandwich in front of me on the table and the thing was really starting to scare me.  I had acted pretty confident up until this point but I was really beginning to have doubts.  Could I actually do this?  Could my stomach hold this entire thing in?  I was about to find out.

    Unfortunately my production crew(production crew, HAHA) was absent during the challenge, so you’re going to have to take my word on my technique.

    I took the sandwich apart and spit it in halves.  The bottom half contained most of the meat so I decided it would be smart to begin with that.  Upon my first bite, it really hit me how much meat was on this thing.  Even after squeezing it down as much as possible, there was still four or five inches of meat to bite through.  My technique was simply to take as big of bites as possible and chew frantically.  I definitely tested the size of my esophagus and swallowed some chunks of meat that weren’t even partially chewed yet.  I ate the middle piece of bread in between bites and the first half the sandwich went down in only about six minutes.  This was going well so far.

    Upon my first bite of the top half of the sandwich, I realized that the onions on this sandwich were among the most potent onions I have ever had.  One hit the back of my throat and my gag reflex was immediately triggered.  I went through and pulled off as many onions as I could.  This is where things started going bad.  I kept eating and shoving the chips into my mouth but my jaw was growing very tired.  Bites were taking twice as long to chew and time was going by fast.  At the 21 minute and 45 second mark, I had only about a bite or two left or bread and the scraps that were on my plate.

    I took a small break and finished the sandwich in about 24 minutes.  I was full, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the fullness that prevented me from setting a new record.  My jaw was overworked and those onions punches me in the back of the throat.

    I will return shortly to complete this record after doing some jaw gymnastics or something.  This shouldn’t be too tough next time.  Thanks to Steve and Doby’s Dagwoods for making me this gigantic sandwich on their opening day.

    Update: I was informed by Steve that the previous record holder actually completed the challenge with a pound less meat than I did so apparently the word is that I am the new record holder.  Excellence is my middle name.

    If you want to try the Double Dagwood for yourself, the address is..

    Doby’s Dagwoods
    111 South Monroe Street
    Monroe, MI 48161
    http://www.dobysdagwood.com/

  • Bomber Breakfast. FTW.

    On February 21st, 2009 I attempted the Bomber Breakfast for the first time and failed miserably.  It was an embarrassing moment for me.  The waitresses laughed at me, and the bus boy made me bus my own table.  As I was pulling out of the parking lot, customers began throwing eggs at my car.  I required many hours of intense therapy to get over the pain, and three car washes to clean the eggs off.

    After my rehabilitation period, I began training for the moment when I was ready to go back and prove to these people that I am not the “skinny little bitch” that they claimed I was.  That breakfast could fit in my stomach, I just went about it wrong!  I should have eaten the hash browns first!  With this in mind, I decided to go full Rocky 4 style and travel to Russia for some old school training.  This included jumping rope, running through the snow, doing sit-ups in a barn, and other activities that don’t involve performance enhancing drugs or running on a treadmill on a ridiculous incline.

    With my mind, body and spirit in the right place I returned to the Bomber to reclaim my self respect.  I ordered my breakfast and the waitress brought it to me with a giant smirk on her face.  Little did she know, I was about to blow her mind.

    If you’re not familiar with the bomber breakfast, it is one pound of hash browns, ten strips of bacon, four eggs, and two slices of toast.  Observe:

    My plan going in was to smother the hash browns with ketchup and Red Hot so they would go down easier.  The first time I attempted this I ate the bacon first then moved onto the hash browns.  This ended up being a terrible idea.  The real challenge of getting through this breakfast is the hash browns.  The taste gets old real fast and your stomach becomes full if you don’t get them down fast enough.  My plan worked beautifully, and the potatoes were gone from the plate within five minutes.  It was a moral victory me just to get those things down.

    After getting through the hash browns, it was all down hill from there.  Bacon and over easy eggs are two of my favorite things in the entire world, so this wasn’t even much of a challenge anymore.  The bacon was a little crispy, but it went down fast.  No problems here.  I did see the waitress walk by a few times with a worried look on here face.  Boom.

    With the bacon and hash browns gone, victory was in sight.  All I had to do was smash through four eggs and a couple pieces of toast.  I considered this more of a victory lap than a final stretch.  I broke the yolks with my first two pieces of toast and used the dip method, ate the whites with my fork, then cleaned the plate with my final two pieces of toast.  Victory was mine.

    If you will notice, I decided to devour that stupid orange garnish just to prove a point.  After finishing, I threw my plate across the restaurant and walked out without paying my bill.  Who’s laughing now?

    I would like to point out that everything written above is false.  No one made any ill comments towards me, threw eggs at my car, or made any faces at me.  I also did not travel to Russia.  I did, however, destroy the Bomber Breakfast and the orange that came with it.  Boo yah, bitches.

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