Have you ever taken a restaurant eating challenge?
I am thinking of doing the Melt Challenge when I'm next in Cleveland.
The Melt Challenge consists of 13 different cheeses all held in place by 3 pieces of grilled bread, a pile of hand-cut fries & slaw. It weighs in at over 5 pounds of food!
People: 1
Time Limit: None
If completed you’ll walk away with a Melt t-shirt or Melt pint glass, $10 gift card and your picture immortalized on the hall of fame website.
Rules: No help from anyone and no trips to the bathroom.
That is pretty gross. When I was still about 19 or 20 I once took and won a challenge. It was to eat an ice cream dish called the Volcano. The banana nearly killed me but I somehow ate the whole dish. After the fact I decided this was pretty stupid.
I've successfully pulled off the Fuddrucker's Pound Challenge twice. It's a 16 oz. burger, a large (roughly a pound) order of chili cheese fries, and a brownie sundae. I know it's a national chain, and it's not that impossible a challenge (as evidenced by the crowded "Wall of Fame"), but hey.
"You laugh at me because I'm different; I laugh at you because I'm on nitrous."
find me at Goodreads
Back in his glory days, I'm pretty sure Jim could have done any restaurant challenge - I've never seen anyone capable of eating as much as he could (and of course he was normal weight, after being underweight as a teenager). I've never been able to eat like that.
God, I'll bet that cheese gets kinda gross by the time you're done eating it. I could never do a challenge like that...I just have never been able to eat huge amounts all at one time. My husband won't even go to buffet restaurants with me cause he says we lose money on them.
I can't even finish standard portions of food served in most restaurants, so I'm not ever going to do that kind of a challenge. But it does remind me of a story.
Back when he was an MIT student, my husband had two friends who could both eat extraordinarily large amounts of food. They had a tradition of hiking up Mt. Washington in New Hampshire once a year on the 4th of July, and on their way home they would stop at a Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor and order "the Mt. Washington Sundae". (I may not recall all the details correctly, but you get the idea.) Since the friends did undergrad and graduate work in the Boston area, they were able to carry on this tradition for a number of years.
The Mt. Washington Sundae was never meant to be consumed by humans; it was more of a marketing gag. It contained something along the lines of 10 scoops of ice cream covered by a pint of fudge sauce and it required a special extra-large dish for serving.
So one 4th of July, in search of a change of scenery, the friends decided to return to Boston after their hike by an alternate route that didn't take them past the Friendly's. But a few weeks later, having missed the sundae, they decided to go bakc and order it. When they arrived, they were greeted with dismay. "Where were you on the 4th?" the Friendly's manager demanded.
It turned out that so few people ever order the Mt. Washington that the Friendly's corporation didn't even have two serving dishes per restaurant because they were never needed. Having realized that every July 4 that particular branch was going to be visited by two crazy people who would actually order and eat a Mt. Washington sundae, they had taken to borrowing the dish in advance from another outlet. That year, they had set out the two serving dishes in anticipation, only to be cruelly disappointed when the hikers never showed.
So the guys got their belated sundaes, but only one was served in a proper dish.
Cute story and good to see you Hatshepsut. Where have you been hiding?
That cheese...thing makes me feel a bit ill just looking at it.
I can handle a wide variety of food and can eat shockingly large amounts so long as I do have variety, but a whole hell of a lot of one thing? No, so I don't think I'll ever be doing one of those challenges.
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
Yeah, that's what always makes me kind of <shudder> about these food challenges, Zuul. Icheese as much as anyone, but a buttload of cold congealing melted cheese? Noooo thanks.
Five or six weeks travel, then logging on to Mellophant/trying to post was really slow for some reason for a while (it seems better now), and I've been really busy, so I've been keeping a low profile lately. But I'm still here!Originally posted by What Exit?
We were having some technical difficulties and painful lag for a while there. It appears CIAS has solved the majority of the problems now, though!
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
Well, not to mention that cheeses should be appreciated on their own. Mashing that many different kinds together has to be gross just due to the competing tastes and textures. And why would you want to ruin cheese like that?Yeah, that's what always makes me kind of <shudder> about these food challenges, Zuul. I
Taumpy: Oh noes, you aren't a super powerful wave of destruction.
Panther Squad: It's true! My scythe does not shorn the biomonsters in great swaths like it ought!
Mmm. That actually looks tasty. Think I might have to have a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.
I attempted this last night. It was... disgusting.
There was one cheese in particular, a sweet cream cheese that spoiled the whole thing. It wasn't an ENORMOUS amount of food but the cheeses just became unpalatable after the the first few bites. If they removed the sweeter cheeses I think I would have finished it. As it stands I got through about 2/3rds of the sandwich, all the fries and some of the coleslaw, which was also kinda gross.
Oh, ick. Sweet cheese? That's just cheating. Sorry your endeavor failed, AG. The cheese to bread ration of that sandwich look way too high.
Yeah, I call foul on the sweet cheese.
...however, I am now strongly craving a cheeseburger and fries.
So now they are just dirt-covered English people in fur pelts with credit cards.
I swore off cheese for life last night, then had pizza for lunch...
So...how're the guts feeling?
I just now watched the "Man vs Food" youtube video and it was ... mesmerizing. Pure America. Just look at those bleak shots of buildings and slushy snow, nothing green anywhere! Then the food market that looked like it was in a converted factory building! Then the food itself! It spoke to me of HOME.
I don't miss America much, but that made me long to go back just for one moment. (I'd always return to the year-round verdancy of the tropics, though.)
Hatshepsut, clearly if you ever come back to the states you need to move to the Deep South. Massive amounts of fried food and sugar and green year round down there!
They didn't feel too bad. It was purely an olfactory revulsion of the sweetness, rather than just a crazy amount of food. Although the portion was big, it wasn't all that much bigger than their standard portions. Remove the sweeter cheeses and maybe include a slice or two more bread and it would be eminently edible, especially by a party of two or more.
Posting rules
Reply with quote
