Combating Obesity in America

Eat UNTIL you die.


15 pound burger
Restaurant overdoes it once again, with 15-pound burger

Wednesday, May 04, 2005
By Alana Semuels, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

CLEARFIELD, Pa. -- It foiled even the doughnut-eating champion of the world.

Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette

Dave "Coon Dog" O'Karma can eat 80 doughnuts in under six minutes, but even he couldn't manage a 15-pound cheeseburger.

Concocted by the chefs at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, the burger might help the pub defend its Guinness Book of World Records status as the restaurant with the world's biggest hamburger.

Denny's big burger lineup includes a 2-pounder, a 3-pounder and a 6-pounder.

If you can eat the 6-pounder in under three hours, you get the burger for free, along with a commemorative T-shirt and your names on a wall of fame. So far, the only winner has been a 100-pound female college student.

But owners thought a 15-pound burger would attract more customers and be a good option for families, parties and anyone who up for a challenge.

The challenge is simple. Just polish off the newest monster burger in under five hours and you win $350, a T-shirt and your name posted on the pub's wall of fame.

You also get the burger for free, which is not bad, considering it costs $39.95.

Fries are extra.

"Every restaurant needs a gimmick -- ours is big burgers," said Dennis Liegey III, son of the restaurant's owner, and its vice president.

Visitors have come from as far away as Australia and California just to see the 6-pounders and try to eat them. They sell about 30 a week.

The newest burger, dubbed the Beer Barrel Belly Buster, is as big around as the inside of a car tire and should be approached with relish.

A cup and a half, that is. It also comes with a cup and half each of mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup, a head of lettuce, two onions, three tomatoes and 25 slices of cheese, which go on 101/2 pounds of ground beef and a bun that is made by a local bakery.

The burger starts out, as burgers typically do, as a large slab of raw ground meat -- 280 ounces of extra lean beef shipped up from Pittsburgh. That's enough beef to make 70 McDonald's quarter pounders.

Kitchen manager Matthew Williams mixes in eggs and bread crumbs and other ingredients he won't disclose to hold the beef together, and then puts it into an auto sham -- basically a big broiler -- for 21/2 hours while the grease sizzles and jumps in the pan.

After it is good and cooked, he lifts the Jabba the Hut-like lump of meat with a pizza shovel to the grill to charbroil it. From there, the burger is lifted again to the condiments counter, where it receives its dressings, which weigh another 5 pounds.

"I'm a little sore," said Williams about the heavy lifting. "It's a workout." He made the first burger Friday night and has perfected the system to prevent the beef from crumbling.

The comment he most often hears about his giant burgers?

"Holy Cow!"

Professional eaters tried to team up to eat the first burger on Saturday, but were stymied by its sheer size.

Coon Dog, the doughnut champion from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, brought a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" to the restaurant to distract him while he ate, but it was not enough.

"The only thing that got killed was my appetite," he said.

He's eaten doughnuts, wings and hot dogs faster than you can say Coon Dog, but couldn't even finish the burger with a partner.

In the next few days, the Belly Buster will appear on national television morning shows, in newspapers and on the Internet. It's great publicity for a small restaurant in a tiny town in mid-Pennsylvania, but not so great for anyone who dares to consume it.

"What's the point of having a hamburger that's 15 pounds?" said Madelyn Fernstrom, associate professor and director of the UPMC Weight Management Center. "It's ridiculous. There's nothing that is redeeming about it."

The caloric value of a burger this size means that it should be consumed by about 30 to 40 people, she said. Healthy or not, if you grill it, they will come.

Retired schoolteachers Alice and John Kirn from Wappingers Falls, N.Y., stopped by the restaurant on their way to a family reunion in Minnesota to see the 6-pound burger. The couple have eaten ostrich, camel and crocodile in their journeys.

Just the sight of the burger, which they at first thought was plastic, made their drive worthwhile.

Gushed John Kirn, "It's one of the seven wonders of the new world."