Meat!

So... last Saturday a bunch of us went to see the IFOCE Chili Cheese Fries eating competition at the Queen Mary. Sonya Thomas won it, eating 8 lbs 2 oz of chili cheese fries, though Joey Chestnut was hot on her heels at 8 lbs 1 oz.

Here are some pictures that damnyou took:

(There's more on his flickr photo set.)

The thing I had never before appreciated about competitive eaters is the quality of the food they eat. 8+ pounds of chili cheese fries is one thing. 8+ pounds of Weinerschnitzel chili cheese fries is... unspeakably disgusting! I couldn't eat half a plate of that stuff! (OK, well, I did inhale eat a couple of italian sausages left over from the "celebrity" eating contest.. but I was SO HUNGRY. And they were free! It only occured to me later that they were probably also from Weinerschnitzel and I felt vaguely queasy.)

The odor of these chili cheese fries permeated the Queen Mary's dining room. It smelled like my middle school cafeteria. I was sitting near the back too; Scott and damnyou were up front taking pictures. I tried to imagine the sounds and smells they were getting up there, as the competitors stuffed pound after squishy pound of stinky meat?-cheese?-potato? concoction in their faces. Sonya Thomas was the only woman in the competition, and half the size of the dudes she was competing with.

Meanwhile, the hilariously snarky anthropologist sitting next to me kept leaning over and whispering comments to me about the gender performance in the MC's introductions of all the "athletes". I swear, one guy went by "El Toro" and gelled his hair into little bull horns... though he only barely ate more than two pounds, which is a pretty poor showing. Sonya, on the other hand, is the "shadow beneath the lotus petal, the sharp intake of breath before the moment of revelation" and other zen-influenced expressions indicating that she is some orientalized supernatural force.

Whatever it takes to make these guys feel better about getting their ass handed to them by a girl half their size. However the competitors felt about her, I think most of the guys in the audience had a crush on her. A couple of comics from the "celebrity" competition were sitting in our row and were very vocal in their support of her.

In the end, it was very very close. They had to weigh both Sonya Thomas's and Joey Chestnut's plates and it looked like neither of them really thought they had won. This was probably one of the tensest and most dramatic eating competitions of the year. Which is good, because while I'm glad I went to this one, I'm not sure I'll ever go again.