Resilient

Denic mentioning the "Thurmanator" burger offered at his local burger place got me thinking, and I figure it'd be fun for folks to talk about any local food challenges offered by restaurants in their area. Since we're all spread so far out across the country, I'm sure there's a good number of different, interesting challenges that we know about.

The one I'm most familiar with in my area is the Smoke Eaters 911 Challenge. Smoke Eaters (formerly known as University Chicken, or Cluck U), has seven different "tiers" of hot-sauce. Starting at Mild, going through some various scary-sounding names, until you reach "Global Thermonuclear" flavor. This sauce is INSANE; merely being near a side dish of the stuff will make your eyes water. I've never been dumb/brave enough to actually taste it.

So, here's the challenge:
1. Prior to beginning this challenge, you have to sign a waver with the store, absolving them of any wrongdoing. Yes, this sauce is THAT hot.

2. Eat 12 wings covered in Global Thermonuclear hot-sauce within 10 minutes.

3. You may not use napkins, or have any kind of beverage until 5 minutes after you've finished eating.

4. You must eat the wings all the way down to the bone, and lick your fingers clean of all the sauce before the 5-min timer starts.

Think you'd be up to this? Next time you're in Santa Clara or San Jose, CA (there's 2 locations), ask around for how to get to University Chicken (or Smoke Eaters, they changed their name late last year). You won't regret the quality of food they've got (my favorite is the chicken quesdilla), but you may regret attempting the 911 Challenge.


Another challenge that I'm somewhat familiar with (I've only ever heard of this challenge actually existing, so I'm not sure it's true) is the 20x20 Challenge at In-N-Out Burger. In-N-Out is a primarily Californian chain of burger restaurants known for their relatively short menu of excellent food, and little-known for their many off-the-menu options.

The 20x20 Challenge is simple: if you order and eat a cheeseburger with 20 patties and 20 slices of cheese, you get it free. Each patty is 1/4 pound of pure beef, with no additives like most fast food restaurants use to bulk up their meat. The challenge has no limitations; it's hard enough to fit that much food in your stomach, let alone wash it down with drinks as well.

Think you'd be up to the 20x20 Challenge? I'm going to try it the next time I'm at an In'n'Out with friends. I better starve myself a bit beforehand, huh? Oh, and just in case you think you can't even convince the chef to make a 20x20... behold the 100x100!

Finally, there was once a mexican semi-fast food restaurant in my hometown (La Crescenta, CA if you're interested) that served the 7-lb Burrito. The owner held a contest/promotion one lovely Saturday in which the participants who individually ate an entire 7-lb Burrito in a single 1-hr sitting would get the burrito free. Recounted on the wall in a news article about the event, one woman not only ate one 7-lb Burrito... she ate TWO, in 1 hour, by herself. That's 14 POUNDS of food.

The store owner was flabbergasted. He was so impressed, that he gave her another challenge: "Come back next week and do that again, and I'll give you the burritos for free AND $1000." She came back the next week and fulfilled that challenge, too.

So, do you think YOU could eat a 7-lb Burrito in an hour? I wish that store was still around so I could give it a try. That's 2-lbs more than a 20x20 burger, though it's got much more varied ingredients, so it would probably be easier to stomach.

Hiber, what line of work did you say you are going into? Something...constructiony? Either way, it is irrelevant...what IS relevant is that you should be a journalist...seriously. Most people would have said "o hai this is the challenge kthx" but you posed questions, included websites, and gave personal thoughts on the matter...I felt like I was sitting on an airplane somewhere reading one of their travel magazines in the back pocket of the seat...kudos

There is a small chain here in NJ, Vex should be familure with it, not so sure there is one down by Kyzara, but it's called Surf Taco. It's a taco/burrito place that was inspired when the owner lived in California for a while and wanted to start a California themed restaurant here on the west coast, but was focused more on a healthier set of food

While that's all well and good, there is one item on the menu that will possibly make you hurl if you try to eat it by yourself.

Enter "The Tsunami". You can see a picture of it a the bottom of the page: http://www.surftaco.com/food/food.html

Basically it's a giant fucking burrito. From their website it is: "Tsunami
Grilled chicken, rice, beans, jack & cheddar cheeses, lettuce, sour cream, & salsa wrapped in two x-tra large flour tortillas, served WET topped with guacamole, sour cream & Pico de Gallo salsa and served with chips." the Challenge is if you eat this giant burrito in 15 minutes (I don't think I've eaten a normal meal there in 15 minutes) alone, you get a tshirt and your picture taking.

Being that I've thought everything has tasted good while eating there, this would be a challenge i might consider (will probably fail, but it will be a tasty failure).

However, I think the challenge of the burrito posted by Hiber may or may not be harder since 7 pounds is a lot of burrito to inhale, but then again, you get a full hour.

The 'hot sauce' challenges are pretty common across the US. In Pittsburgh it's Quaker Steak and Lube that has the 'hottest' wing sauce.

{deleted post} Fuldo wrote:

Hiber, what line of work did you say you are going into? Something...constructiony? Either way, it is irrelevant...what IS relevant is that you should be a journalist...seriously.

I appreciate your positive review of my writing skills, and also the somewhat humorous effect of your assumption on what profession I'm in. I'm a software programmer, so yes... it's somewhat "constructiony" in that I "build" software, but it's all writing code, so it's "sorta journalismy" too.

Xalroth, your post on the Tsunami burrito brings to mind the local food contest that I found out about after posting my original three. There's a mexican place called Iguanas near my house (heck, it's on the same street I live on, but outside of the parts of San Jose that I usually go to) that I wouldn't have ever found had it not been for discovering their signature dish online: the Burritozilla.


It's a 5.25-lb burrito that they regularly hold challenges over. There's a leaderboard posted in the restaurant that records the folks who've consumed these monsters in the fastest times.

I ate at Iguanas for the first time yesterday. Being a big guy myself, I figured that I could probably polish off a lot of food in one sitting. But I realized before ordering, that since the Burittozilla costs a whopping $18, it'd be an expensive mistake if I couldn't actually eat the whole thing. So, I got the "Super Iguana" instead, which is $12, and weighs about 2.5 lbs (at a guess). Even this smaller burrito is made from 2 HUGE tortillas so large that as they sat on the grill to warm, they almost completely covered this entire industrial grill.

So, with huge burrito in hand, I started chowing down. I hadn't eaten in almost a day (my sleep schedule's been weird and my hunger cycle is fucked up), so I figured that I'd be able to easily polish this thing off. Not even close. I barely managed to eat 2/3 of the thing before having to give up completely and take the rest home for my next meal. This ended up being quite fortuitous, though, because an over-reheated 1/3 Super Iguana was really good, if not even better than the original. The source cream and cheese were cold when I ate it fresh, which clashed with the hot beams, meat, and rice.

I guess that proves that it doesn't just take a fat guy to be able to eat a comically huge meal. It takes something else entirely.