Bloomberg.com has an article about competitive pumpkin growing which says that the Wallace pumpkin farm in Rhode Island received $10,000 from a Japanese game show for hosting a pumpkin eating contest.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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(from Laura’s livejournal) While there has been a lot of attempts the Rockford Corner Bar chili dog challenge, there is another hot dog challenge in the northeast with a more modest all time record. All Spike’s Junkyard Dogs have a hot dog Wall of Fame Eating 6 hot dogs is required to get your picture on the wall and a T Shirt. The highest total on a Wall of Fame is 17 at the Thayer Street location in Providence. Eating 18 hot dogs or more will result in the restaurant picking up the tab according to this metafilter comment.

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