Food Detective: Trying to stomach macho meals

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Updated: June 14, 2011 8:57PM

In Des Moines, Iowa the other weekend, I marveled at the variety of huge, heart-challenging sandwiches.

At B&B Grocery, Meat & Deli, they boast a whole line of “Killers.” There’s Zach’s and Dad’s Killers (both sub-type sandwiches), Quadzilla (four hamburgers) and one giant pork tenderloin (I had this one: excellent).

Put them all together and you have the Killossal, a novelty sandwich inaugurated the day we visited B&B. It was barely finished by a family of five.

Near Drake University, there’s Jethro’s BBQ, whose monster concoction is the Adam Emmenecker. Named after the 2008 Missouri Valley Conference MVP, this “sandwich” (a name that barely applies) includes an 8-ounce cheeseburger, 1/4 pound of bacon, a pound of brisket, 1/2 pound of pork tenderloin, buffalo chicken tenders and a few fried cheese cubes, all covered with lava-like rivulets of Cheddar cheese. It costs $24.95. If you can stuff it down in under 15 minutes, it’s yours “free.”

Recently, Adam Richman of Travel Channel’s “Man vs. Food” took the Adam Emmenecker challenge. He did not succeed. His photo has joined the many others on Jethro’s Wall of Shame, the word “Failed” stamped in red ink across his face.

The painfully obvious question: Who — aside from someone with a shock-seeking TV show — would want to eat so much food so quickly?

For most of us, pounding pounds of meat into the belly is a revolting prospect. Watching YouTube videos of guys hammering back huge hamburgers, one fully expects an upchuck (in competitive eating circles, this is called a “reversal of fortune”).

But for some, eating vast quantities is yet another feat of strength, a way of testing one’s testosterone-defined limits — though no one looks very happy about their accomplishment. The sign at B&B mockingly queries, “Are you man enough?”

At Wiener and Still Champion, 802 Dempster in Evanston, owner and grill man Gus Paschalis serves up the Triple Undisputed, three pounds of beef and cheese.

“A customer asked about the biggest burger we had,” Paschalis says. “At that time, we had a two-pound Double Undisputed. He ate it, but he was still hungry. He asked us to make a bigger one, and the Triple Undisputed was born.”

If you can eat the Triple Undisputed in less than the record time of 1 minute, 40 seconds, it’s yours at no charge, in what’s surely a dyspeptic Pyrrhic victory.

According to Paschalis, of those who attempt such feats of self-punishing gluttony, “99 percent are males under 25.”

David Hammond is an Oak Park writer, Chicago Public Radio contributor and founder/moderator of culinary chat site LTHForum.com. E-mail detective@suntimes.com.