Travel Channel – episode guide | slideshow

Restaurants

• Chick & Ruth’s Delly (Annapolis, MD) challenge – 6 pound shake and 1.5 lb. sandwich
  Home Page | Yelp
  Page about challenge on restaurant’s website
  Blog entry by Will Millender about being the first person to complete the challenge
  Hometown Annapolis report on the filming
  Grubgrade review
• Ben’s Chili Bowl
  Home Page | Citysearch | Yelp
  Washington Post obituary from October 9, 2009 about the death of Ben’s founder Ben Ali
• Horace & Dickie’s Seafood Carryout meal – jumbo fish sandwich
  Yelp | Metromix

List of Washington, DC area eating challenges in eatfeats database
List of Northern Virginia area eating challenges in eatfeats database

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Adam Richman is currently at the “Grease Trucks” on the campus of Rutgers University and will be attempting the 5 Fat Sandwich challenge at 5 PM today.

update The Rutgers student paper has a report on the filming (contains spoilers)

The twitter for Doogie’s Hot Dogs reports that Adam Richman will be recording there on Friday. Doogie’s is located in Newington, CT and no Connecticut episode is listed on season 2 episodes.

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Travel Channel Episode Guide | Slideshow | Side of the City video (South Street)

Restaurants

• Tony Luke’s Challenge – Ultimate Cheesesteak
  Home Page | Citysearch | Yelp
  Video clip about the Ultimate Cheesesteak’s construction
  The Ultimate Cheesesteak was apparently created solely for the episode; it is not listed on the online menu.
• Franklin Fountain meal – Mount Vesuvius sundae
  Home page | Citysearch | Yelp
• Dinic’s Roast Beef & Pork meal – Italian roast pork sandwich
  Yelp | Holly Eats review

List of Philadelphia area eating challenges in the eatfeats database

It would be interesting to learn why a made for TV sandwich at Tony Luke’s was used as the episode’s challenge when Jim’s Steaks has maintained a cheesesteak record for over 30 years. Perhaps the current record of 13 cheesesteaks in an hour by “Humble” Bob Shoudt was too daunting. (The program guide says that Jim’s Steaks will appear in the episode.)

13 cheesesteaks might not be the overall Philadelphia record. In a 1978 article, Lynda Kuerth, Jim’s steaks record holder from 1977 to 2001 (11 sandwiches) said she ate 15 steak sandwiches during a visit to Philadelphia. (The location and duration of that feat was not mentioned.)

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(from email) R & I Magazine has an article about giant sandwich challenges. A new challenge on the list is the Big Ugly Sandwich Challenge at the Fat Sandwich Company. According to the article, The Big Ugly contains:

four cheeseburgers, a double cheesesteak, chicken cheesesteak, gyro meat, grilled chicken, bacon, sausage, pork roll, mozzarella sticks, chicken finger, chicken nuggets, macaroni-and-cheese bites, fried mushrooms, jalapeno poppers, pizza bites, onion rings, hash browns, American cheese, ketchup and mayonnaise

and is free to a diner who can finish it in less than 15 minutes. The Fat Sandwich company has locations in Norman, Oklahoma and Champaign, Illinois.

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The BBC has an article and video about the creation of a 1500 meter long (.93 mile) sandwich in Tehran. The sandwich contained 1000 kg (2200 lbs.) of ostrich meat and was created to promote Iranian ostrich farming. Onlookers devoured the sandwich before it could be officially recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records, but the event organizers hope that video of the sandwich will result in it supplanting a 1378 meter long Italian ostrich sandwich in the official records.

FarsNews has a picture of Kobayashi in its article about the sandwich.

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(From Save The Deli) The New York Times has an article and slideshow about restaurants near the exits of the New Jersey Turnpike. Harold’s New York Deli in Edison, NJ was visited near exit 10:

Harold Jaffee cut his teeth as general manager at the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan, where the sandwiches are big enough. But there’s something about New Jersey that made him want to do things bigger.

At Harold’s New York Deli, in a Holiday Inn just a kreplach’s toss from Exit 10, Mr. Jaffee serves a 26-ounce pastrami sandwich, two little triangles of bread teetering like a farce atop twin peaks of meat. The house-cured pastrami is soft, warm and mildly spiced. You can feed a carload on it, supplemented by slices of rye and half sours from the “world’s largest pickle bar.”

The 26 ounce sandwich is not the largest item on the menu; triple decker sandwiches are available.

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(From yama3) McDonald’s of Japan has set up a website devoted to its large burgers at megamac.jp The website has an announcement that the Mega Teriyaki burger will be introduced in July along with a commerical for the new sandwich.

In a recent blog entry, Tomoko Miyake offers a review of the MegaMac and mango milkshake (automatically translated):

It was Mega [te] [ri] which does not betray my expectation!

Also mango shake was the best matching and, the happy 2 time ☆☆

MacDonald me happy making, thank you for very much, (^O^)/

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Steakbellie was recently in Jim’s Steaks in Philadelphia and he took some pictures of the Wall of Fame and emailed them. There are apparently just two members of the Wall of Fame. Lynda Kuerth ate 11 cheesesteaks in an hour and a half in 1977 and high school football player Alex Friedman bested that by one sandwich in 2001. The pictures of Alex Friedman are surrounded by receipts for his steaks. The wall has apparently yet to be updated with “Humble” Bob Shoudt’s record breaking 13 cheesesteaks in January. Pictures of the Wall of Fame are available after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

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wcbstv.com has an article and video about “Humble” Bob Shoudt breaking the cheesesteak record at Jim’s Steaks in Philadelphia. Humble Bob ate 13 sandwiches in about an hour to break the record of 12 set by Alex Friedman set in 2001 in a Wing Bowl qualifying stunt. Freidman broke Lynda Kuerth’s 1977 mark of 11 cheesesteaks, which remains the women’s record.

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(This is the post with id # 1000. There are actually fewer posts available on this blog due to deletions and cancelations, but I thought it still deserved a more significant entry than just a one sentence post linking to another article.)

If you have a Guinness Book of World Records from the late 1970s or 80s, there are several pages devoted to eating records in it, and in that section, there is probably a picture of Olivet, Michigan native Lynda Kuerth standing over a plate of hot dogs at a contest at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia in 1977. Ms. Kuerth won that event by eating 23 bunless hot dogs in 3 minutes and 10 seconds (at bottom of link). Her victory is mentioned in an article about Sharon Scholten, another female hot dog eating champion. This mark compares reasonably well with current eaters’ results. Humble Bob Shoudt ate 20 bunless hot dogs in 3 minutes and 40 seconds in his successful qualifying stunt for the the 2005 Wing Bowl. It is interesting that a female competitive eater surprised a Philadelphia stadium crowd over a quarter century before Sonya Thomas shocked Wing Bowl 12 spectators at Wachovia Center in 2004.

Lynda Kuerth showed that her talents extended to long duration events when she set the cheesesteak eating record at Jim’s Steaks in Philadelphia by eating 11 sandwiches in 90 minutes in 1978 or 1979. (I am not sure if this record still holds, but it lasted at least two decades if it has been broken. Her trips from Michigan to Philadelphia invalidate Don “Moses” Lerman’s claim that he is the first competitive eater to travel outside his or her home region for contests. Gregg Kirk wrote an article about Jerry Lehane III’s attempt to break Ms. Kuerth’s cheesesteak record (he finished with 7 sandwiches) around 2000 which is not available on the web. The last paragraph offers a description of Lynda and her feats:

In 1978, in an effort to generate publicity for his establishment, [Jim’s Steaks owner] Abner Silver decided to have an eating contest. One night on the news, he saw a human-interest story on Olivet, MI native Lynda Kuerth who had broken the Guiness Book of World Records title for banana split eating. After making a few phone calls to the television station, Abner got in touch with Lynda and agreed to fly her to Philly and give her a place to stay for the competition. That year, Lynda ate 10 1/2 steaks in an hour and a half, and later that year she appeared in Veteran’s Stadium and broke the Guiness Book of World Records in hot dog eating (without the bun). She ate 23 hot dogs in a minute and a half. The next year, she returned to Jim’s to break her own record by eating 11 steaks. No one has been able to come close since. Oh, and how big is Lynda, who now lives a quiet life in Michigan with a husband and two kids? “She was about five ft., eight and about 135 lbs.,” says Abner. “She had an amazing metabolism.”

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The Philly Cheese Steak Shoppe, with two locations on the northern California coast, has a challenge involving a three foot long cheesesteak . Eaters who succesfully finish the sandwich in under two hours will qualify for a contest to be held at the end of the year. (It is not mentioned if the meal is free for those who finish it in time.) The winner of that competition will be awarded free cheesesteaks for a year and be featured in the restaurant’s advertising. The best time recorded in the challenge so far is 40 minutes by Bill Telnes.

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