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| The Quadruple Bypass Burger |
The average person's stomach can hold about a liter of food, or close to two pounds' worth. But who wants to be average? All over town, restaurants are offering up contests of confection, defying brave eaters to ingest more food than they should eat in a week -- daily recommended values be damned!
Armed with a big mouth and an empty stomach, our intrepid writer Zach Fowle has dared to become one of these food fighters -- travelling metro Phoenix to face new challenges and prove to the animal kingdom that man belongs at the top of the food chain.
There's a war going on in this country, and our enemy is fat. While the president's wife denounces fast food in all its forms, reality TV reveals the valiant struggle of the obese to lose that flab. Preschool kids are served healthy and organic meals of millet and Brussels sprouts. Millet!
And then there's the Heart Attack Grill (6185 W. Chandler Blvd.).
Famous (or infamous, rather) for its embrace of everything bad for you, the burger joint has made a name for itself by giving the proverbial one-finger salute to the idea of healthiness. The potatoes are deep fried in pure lard; the milkshakes have the world's highest butterfat content; they even have no-filter cigarettes on the menu.
At Heart Attack Grill, corpulence is king -- any customer who weighs in above 350 pounds on the restaurant's on-site scale eats for free.
The headliner of unhealthiness, however, is the Quadruple Bypass Burger. Loaded with four half-pound beef patties and eight slices of good-old processed American cheese, this tribute to chunkiness is two pounds and reportedly boasts 8,000 calories. If you finish in one sitting, one of Heart Attack Grill's sexy nurses will roll your lard-ass out to your car via wheelchair, allowing you to put off burning away those precious calories as long as possible.
As I sat to order, a nurse rolled out a victorious quad eater on the wheelchair. Our server tells me the customer actually finished two quads, though she doesn't really have to -- it's apparent in his face. The guy has the meat sweats and looks like he might spew at any minute. It's a good thing he's getting wheeled out, because it looks like he can barely walk.
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| Even the payment process is designed for maximum laziness. Every item is priced so that, when combined with tax, your bill is always on the dollar. No pesky math here! |
Inspired by this brave man's gluttony, I don the obligatory wristband and hospital gown and order up a Quadruple Bypass along with a side of Flatliner fries (which, by the way, are unlimited).
Fifteen minutes later, the burger arrives -- a gooey, greasy mass of cheese and beef alternating colors of gold and brown like a fat man's dream rainbow. The bun is glazed with an oily sheen of God-knows-what -- experience has me thinking oil.
To eat it with my hands would be impossibly messy, so I opt for utensils. The first bite is so damn cheesy it's like biting into a brick of Velveeta. As I work my way further into the depths of the burger, I get more beef, which is nice. It's moist and greasy, each bite a chewy, satisfying nosh.
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| Obesity accomplished. |
If you want fixings like tomato or onion, you have to add them yourself at a little bar they've set up near the fries. Problem is, the glue-like cheese on the Quadruple Bypass makes it nearly impossible to add anything in there. I resign myself to taking a bite of burger then a bite of onion in a sad sort of food assembly-line.
In anticipation of my victory, I purposely parked as far away from the restaurant as possible -- I wanted to get the most out of my wheelchair ride. Unfortunately, like all women, Heart Attack Grill's nurses have boundaries. My server took me to the edge of the sidewalk and dumped me out. Still, the momentary break from walking was nice. I'll take my lazy victories where I can get them.
The Quadruple Bypass is by no means difficult -- I finished mine in about half an hour while taking breaks to flirt with the naughty nurses and refill my lard-covered French fries. The hard part is dealing with the guilt of knowing you probably just took a year or two off your life. But, if you're going to kill yourself, there are few tastier ways to do it.
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