Gabe Venit emails that “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti won the first qualifier for Jake’s Burgers contest yesterday by eating 5 Jake Burgers (double hamburgers) in 2 minutes 15 seconds. Gabe Venit was second with a time of 5 minutes and 30 seconds to complete 5 burgers.

Wicked Local has an article about the pumpkin pie eating contest between Joe Menchetti and Tom “Goose” Gilbert on the Chris Tabb show. Gilbert’s victory resulted in his being named the top eater in the new independent rankings.

Results from the strawberry eating contest held at the Strawberry Festival in Delaplane, Virginia have been posted. The top 3:

1. “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti 7.86 lbs. in 7 minutes
2. Joshua “Jabber Jaws” Currier 7.62 lbs.
3. Ian “The Invader” Hickman 6.705 lbs.

Joshua Currier was also the runner up in the Big A burger contest in North Carolina, where he finished 30 seconds behind Joe Menchetti.

update Videos of the professional and amateur contest are available.

Jill Stoler has a blog entry with pictures

David Mitolo has a gallery

1. The meatball contest sponsored by Bartolini’s restaurant has the following eligibility restriction (See May 2):

   Eaters competing in IFOCE-MLE sanctioned Food drinking contests within the past 12 months will not be eligible to participate in this event. Food Drinkers attempting to enter the Meatball qualifiers at Bartolini’s or fraudulently qualifying for the American Meatball Eating Championship will be immediately disqualified and forfeit any prize money.

2. Joe Menchetti is listed as one of the three eaters who will receive byes to that contest on Bartolini’s website.
3. The Krystal Square Off website reports that Joe Menchetti competed in a pre-qualifier in Nashville last September.

(from MosesNews) A press release about last month’s Big “A” burger contest at Andy’s Burgers, Shakes & Fries is now available at Carolina Newswire. The top 3 finishers:

1. Joe Menchetti, 5 minutes 15 seconds, $1000 prize
2. Joshua Currier, 5:45, Lumberton, NC, $500
3. Shayne Katrigis, 7:58, Charleston, SC, $250

Metromix has a gallery of the final contest in the “Munch Madness” team relay bar bite eating tournament, which was nicknamed the “Elite Ate”

The winner is not mentioned in the gallery captions. Team Manchetti was one of the eight finalists.

AICE news reports that Joe Menchetti won $5000 at a wing eating contest in at the Wing Shack in Whitby Ontario sponsored by the Rock FM

The contest entry form, which had the country field fixed at “Canada”, implied that only Canadian citizens could compete in that event.

Joe mentions his victory in the wing contest in this news video about the paczki contest.

If the paczki eating contest held at Eddy’s Bake Shop in Ansonia, Connecticut awarded a ring to the victor, “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti would now be able to adorn each finger on one hand. ConnPost reports that Menchetti won his fifth paczki title and a prize of $200 by eating a record 13 paczkis in five minutes. NBCI5.com has a gallery and news video.

Deresque has information about the New Year’s Eve eating contest that Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota and “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti will participate in. The competition will be part of a professional wrestling / competitive eating extravaganza that will be televised on TV Tokyo. (Pro wrestling is called “hustling” in Japan.) Shirota had a giant spoon at the event announcing the contest.

The transcript of this press conference announces that Gal Sone will be having an eating contest with retired mixed martial artist / pro wrestler Antonio Inoki during the event. Inoki fought Muhammad Ali to a draw in a mixed martial arts contest in 1976.

MyRecordJournal.com has an article and video about “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti recording video footage that will be televised during the AICE vs. Japan contest

Menchetti put on an eating display for about an hour Friday, but much of that time was spent setting up camera shots and bringing out the food.

In that time, he ate five hamburgers, two plates of French fries, three slices of pepperoni pizza, a 12-ounce steak, five hot dogs, half of a stuffed bread, two bottles of water and two cans of diet Coke.

Joe Menchetti appears in an ESPN.com article about fans of the University of Connecticut traveling to the Gulf Coast for the men’s and women’s Final Fours in 2004:

Another stroll down River Walk, and I run into “Big Red,” a really loud fan who always starts the crowd cheering “U-C-O-N-N!” He gives me the cell-phone number of a Joe Manchetti, another Huskie-maniac who is on the road somewhere between New Orleans and San Antonio.

“I flew on Friday from Hartford to Baton Rouge, and drove to San Antonio,” said Joe. “Took me about seven hours. We were tired. After the Saturday games, we walked back to the hotel — for about a mile. I took a shower and a power nap for a few hours. Totally forgot about Daylight Savings Time.

BeautifulBrian.com has a report on Joe Menchetti’s behavior at the Black & White Cookie Contest, a preview of the Opie & Anthony egg nog drinking contest and a summary of the year in competitive eating.

The website for Bubba Dogs reports on the hot dog eating contest it held Saturday:

Well, it was a great day. We ended up with 10 contestants on Saturday and had a phenomenal time. Most importantly, we raised $2000 for the Fallen Heroes Fund. The winner was Gentleman Joe Menchetti who gobbled 18 hot dogs in 12 minutes. It seems that Joe was taking it easy as he knew he had it in the bag. Below are the pix from the day (click on them for larger view). The weather cooperated and we ended up moving from the promenade at JFK to the La Costa complex parking lot. This proved to be the right move as most of the festivities were taking place in this area anyway.

The blog for Bubba Dogs reports that “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti will compete in their hot dog eating contest in Sea Isle City, NJ on Saturday. The entrance fee for the contest is $15. Prizes will include Flyers Club Box Seats, limousine service and restaurant gift certificates to Smithville Inn & Lobster Loft.

A video of the pumpkin eating contest between teams consisting of Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota & Tomoko Miyake and “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti & Elizabeth “Rubber Gut” Canady can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-34LXhHeKs
Read the rest of this entry »

The pumpkin contest between teams from the United States and Japan was broadcast today and R Suzuki has a blog entry about the program

(From anonymous comment) KrystalSquareOff.com reports that “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti ate 24 burgers in 2 minutes in a Krystal prequalifier in Nashville, 4 off the record held by Joey Chestnut and Bob Shoudt. The article mentions Menchetti’s estrangement from the IFOCE, but does not say if he will be allowed to compete in the 8 minute qualifier on Sunday. GJoe is in Tennessee to compete in the Backyard Burgers finals tomorrow in Memphis.

The Kent County Times has an article about the pumpkin contest in Rhode Island between mixed gender pairs from the United States and Japan which describes the origin of the event:

Emi Umeda, who works with the production crew, said the name of the show translates to “Anything is possible,” and she said the point of the show is to take a topic, find who’s best in the world at it and challenge them to a contest against Japan.

One of the topics is a pumpkin-eating contest, she said, which will pit two professional American eaters against two professional Japanese eaters, making their way through five different pumpkin dishes.

In order to get started, the show wanted to find who held the record for growing the largest pumpkin in the world, which happened to be Coventry resident Ron Wallace, who owns a farm at 860 Plainfield Pike.

The American female made her competitive debut according to the article:

The Japanese contestants are Tomoko Miyake and Nobuyuki Shirota and the American contestants are “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti of Wallingford, Conn., and Elizabeth “Rubber Gut” Kennedy from Florida.

“This is my first time doing this,” Kennedy said. “I made some inquiries on the Internet just out of curiosity and interest and they gave me a call.”

The article verifies reports of a US victory:

Since it may be difficult for American viewers to tune into the show to see the results, St. Jean said the American team ended up easily outpacing the team from Japan.

update BigPumpkins.com has some pictures of the contest (bottom of page) One of the pictures is captioned:

At the Wallaces on August 21, 2007, Gentleman Joe, urges his teamate to down more Pumpkin Lobster and Pumpkin pizza. She ate an entire Large Pumpkin Pizza and 2 lb Pumpkin Lobster in 3 minutes. But that was just the appetizer.

update #2 The BigPumpkins.com message board has some threads about the contest: Thread 1, Thread 2, Thread 3

update #3 Dec 26, 2007 The quoted article spelled Elizabeth’s last name incorrectly. The correct spelling is Canady.

From AICE news:

As predicted by Chairman Chowhound Chapman, Gentleman Joe Menchetti and Elizabeth “Rubber-Gut” Cassidy defeated the great Shirota and Miyake in decisive fashion at the Wallace Pumpkin Farm in Rhode Island. It seems that Gentleman Joe Menchetti who cannot be beaten by man or beast in the pumpkin disciplines and the unknown “Queen Guttress” (stay tuned America, you will be finding out more about this amazing female Eater in the near future) put down the proverbial hammer as they won four of the five contests.

AICE news reports that a multiple round, tag team eating contest between two person mixed gender teams from the United States and Japan will take place at Ron Wallace’s pumpkin farm in Greene, Rhode Island on August 21. The food will be a variety of pumpkin based dishes. Nobuyuki “the Giant” Shirota and Tomoko “Esute” Miyake will represent the Japanese, while the home team will consist of “Gentleman” Joe Menchetti and Elizabeth “Rubber Gut” Cassidy. Ms. Cassidy was predicted to come in fourth at May’s AICE rib contest in Kansas City, but no results for her from that event were listed and I have not been able to find any other competitive eating information about her on the internet.

In his blog, Shirota reports that he will be going abroad next week, but does not provide further details (automatically translated):

By the way next week, almost it is the foreign country.

There is no sight-seeing, is.

Today, because carrying which can be used even in the foreign country was rented, when perhaps it does

Perhaps, it renews [burogu] from the foreign country, perhaps, but it does not do.

AICE news also reports that Joel “the Cannon” Podelsky won the knish eating contest held on the Coney Island Cyclones Jewish Heritage Night.

AsiaWeek has an article about Sunday’s Chef One Dumpling Eating Contest in Flushing, Queens, on Sunday. The third place finishers are not mentioned.

CheapAssFood.com has a video from the women’s and men’s dumpling eating contest at the Dragon Boat Festival in Queens, NY Sunday. Floria Lee’s technique is quite impressive.

Please place results from the dumpling eating contest at the Dragon Boat Festival in Queens, NY today in the comments to this post. BeautifulBrian reports that Dale Boone competed in the contest, which is not an AICE contest, but has had AICE eaters compete in previous years.

This blog entry reports that the women’s winner outate the men’s 43 dumplings to 41. I will be very interested to learn who the female winner is if that is the case.

update results from Joe Menchetti

Men
1. Joe Menchetti, 60
2. Chris Yee, 41 1st ever eating contest
3. Dale Boone, 39

Women
1. Floria Lee, about 43
2. Tang Na Way ?
3. ?

(from AICE news) Pastrami Joes’ Reuben sandwich contest, 8 minutes

1 Gentleman Joe Menchetti 5 sandwiches
2. Jake “The Butcher” Casey (last year’s amateur winner) 4.6 sandwiches
3. Chris “The American” Schlesinger with 4.5
4 Mark Lyle “the Human Vacuum”
5 Chuck “The Chomper” Davidson

update The Battle Creek Enquirer has an article about the contest

East Boston Italian Festival sausage results from Derek “Wing Tut” Payne
1st - Tom “Goose” Gillbert - 4.84 New World Record!
2nd - Ian “The Invader” Hickman - 4.38
3rd - Nate “The Nibbler” Gayman - 2.78
4th - Jared Kaiser “Roll” - 2.39
5th - Tim “Chomps-A-Lot” Brien - 2.00
6th - Bruce “Captian RU” Sinclair - 1.83lbs
7th - Tim “Im Not Tom” Crews - 1.47lbs
8th - “princess” Diana Boro - 1.39lbs
9th - Mikey Canoli Saffie - 1.26lbs
10th - “big” David gore - 1.17lbs
11th - Jim “the Heater” Fallon - .87lbs
12th - Pat capagreco (pres I.U.) - .86lbs
13th - Jeff “big show” freeman - .83lbs

Brian Seiken has made the Joe Menchetti episode of his PPV program available for free. There is also a youtube clip of an outtake of a call-in to Joe by Brian Subich.

Brian says that Danielle Franco, the producer of Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating, will be the next guest for his pay per view program.