I don’ t think it is a secret around here that our staff likes to eat.  I mean, why else would we have a food blog?!  DUH!  Anyway, one of the occasional by-products of eating and competitive human nature are eating challenges.  You see them all the time on television, online, at your local bar, etc.  There’s even a website called EatFeats in our blog links that updates the news and challenges throughout the country.

Since Man v. Food debuted a new season this past Wednesday (outstanding show) and the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest is in a few weeks on July 4th, I thought it would be kind of fun to open our own little corner of the blogosphere to see what kind of eating challenges our readers and staff have done.  These don’t have to be “professional” challenges per se, as I’m interested to hear some of the challenges that you’ve had amongst your friends as a bet or a “I bet you can’t eat…” type of thing.  My only request is that they invovle either quantity of food (example:  a two pound cheeseburger) or spice of food (example:  super hot chicken wings) and were part of a competition against at least one other person (or thing in the case of a restaurant).

Since I’m the author of this post, I’ll start with some of the things that I’ve done in my “challenge” history:

*Fast Freddy’s Gorilla Burger:  This was at a now defunct restaurant in a town next to my hometown and I did it when I was roughly 16-17 years old.  The burger was two pounds of ground beef and every topping imaginable (avocados, tomatoes, onions, bacon, mulitple slices of cheese, pickles, lettuce, mayo, ketchup, mustard, mushrooms, etc.) on a bun.  I took this challenge on two separate occasions and finished it both times.  The prize was my name on a plaque on the wall.

*Last Man Standing Chicken Wing Challenge:  This was in college and was between myself and two friends.  We bought several bags of frozen wings on a random Saturday, cooked them in the oven and ate until we could go no more.  Sadly, I lost this one as I only finished 51 wings for second place.  The winner finished 54.

*Bub’s Big Ugly:  I did this one along with wibia and we both finished it.  You can read about it the details of it on their website.  Sadly, this one was pre-blog, so we don’t have any documentation.  Also, this is supposedly the one that Adam Richman did on Man v. Food for the Indianapolis episode that they taped last month.  Apparently his challenge was to eat four of them and judging by a post that I saw on his Twitter page (since removed), I think he accomplished his goal.  The episode will air in August.  As for wibia and my challenge, we got our picture on the wall of Bub’s for one year as our prize.

*Wings Etc. Wall of Flame Challenge:  We actually profiled this one for the blog as wibia and I both did it, so you can read about it here.

*Stanley’s Deli Fat Stanley Challenge:  Again, this one was profiled for the blog, so you can also read about it here.  Sadly, this restaurant has gone out of business, so any future attempts at this challenge by me or anyone else are impossible.

*Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Nugget Challenge:  This one is just one that two friends and myself made up one night while sitting in a bar.  We went to Wendy’s at 2:00 a.m. (LOL), bought one hundred spicy chicken nuggets and bet each other that each of us couldn’t finish thirty of them.  My two competitors did not finish as they only got into the mid twentys, but I did and kept eating to just to see how far I could go.  I eventually made it to fifty and needless to say, I have had zero desire to eat a Wendy’s Chicken Nugget since that day (I used to ALWAYS get them).

I’ve had some other eating related feats but they can’t really be classified as “challenges” as I’ve defined it, so I’ll leave them out.  So, what have you guys done?  Fill us in!  Don’t be shy or embarrassed to share!

-IndianapolisEater

As we have referenced on this site before, local eatery Stanley’s New York Deli has what we thought was an eating challenge.  While they do have a sandwich called the “Fat Stanley” that is large and challenging to eat, there is not an official contest, per se, to finish it.  Regardless, being able to finish this sandwich is quite an accomplishment and the photo diary of my attempt is below (results at the end; yes, I’m making you wait).

Disclaimer:  I will point out that since I expected to be rolled out of Stanley’s on a cart, I only ate a handful and a half of mini twist pretzels for lunch and worked out at the gym as hard as I possibly could for about ninety minutes prior to this in order to work up a HUGE hunger.  While I am a big eater, this is not my normal eating intake.

I arrived at Stanley’s with my oldest brother and ordered my Fat Stanley ($12.99) and was given a smirk by the guy working the counter as he probably thought I was just some sort of chump trying to be funny.  A couple minutes later, the same guy delivered my sandwich to the table, laughed and gave me a dismissive “good luck.” Little did he know that I planned on bringing Stanley’s cute little sandwich to its knees.

Fat Stanley

If you can’t tell by the picture, here’s the official description of the Fat Stanley from Stanley’s website:

“1 LB of Corned Beef, Pastrami, Roast Beef and Oven Roasted Turkey Breast with Imported Swiss Cheese, Homemade Cole Slaw, Yellow Mustard and Thousand Island Dressing piled high with three slices of Old World Rye.”

As you can also tell, the sandwich was served with homemade potato chips (delicious, by the way) and a pickle spear.  The packet of Equal is there as a frame of reference so you can see how big the sandwich is.  After a taking some photos and yucking it up with my brother, I was ready to dig in.

Time to eat...

As you can see, the sandwich was about as big as half of my face but I was not intimidated.  The biggest issue with this sandwich is that it is so large that it is really difficult to manage and meat falls everywhere.  Despite this, I kept plowing on and after about five minutes, I was really tearing into it.

Halfway done...

As I hit the halfway mark, I realized that this sandwich was going to be no problem to eat so I wasn’t concerned anymore about eating it quickly so that I could finish before I felt full.  I wanted to enjoy the sandwich and I must say that the corned beef and pastrami portions of the sandwich were DELICIOUS.  The roast beef and oven roasted turkey were good too, but the former two meats were the ones that stole the show.  I took about eight more minutes to eat and was left with this:

All done!

After finishing this monstrosity, I can honestly say that I was only probably about 85-90% full.  I don’t know if that says the sandwich is not really all that big or that is an endorsement of my gluttonous tendencies (I went out for a medium Reese’s Blizzard at Dairy Queen later), but I firmly believe that any above average eater could accomplish this one with little to no problems.  My brother said he’s going to try it next time he goes to Stanley’s, so that’ll put my theory to the test.  Also, WIBIA and I talked soon after I ate this thing and he’s going to get in there as soon as possible to make his run at the Fat Stanley.  I wholeheartedly believe that he’ll dispatch this sandwich with relative ease.

-IndianapolisEater