A kilo of meat divided into two steaks rests on the kitchen grill. You will need 10 minutes of fire. In the final sprint Khalid will add six slices of cheese to melt in the heat. When the meat is ready, the cook will execute the most difficult part: to assemble a building with foundations that is not torn down by the law of gravity of the anxious. There will be in addition to the meat two breads at the ends, lettuce and tomato to espuertas, strips of bacon, its special sauce and a herd of onion rings. As much as it fits without the structure collapsing.
While waiting for Khalid to finish his mission, I think about how I am going to explain this to my nutritionist, who has imposed on me a summer plan to relieve the handles of love that surround my drowned king trunk. I'll tell you I'm a professional, a pit bull of journalism who accepts the challenge of writing (and eating) a giant hamburger in this extreme food series. I follow orders. I am innocent, I repeat myself.
I'm ready for the challenge of the "immortals" that Bentley's Burger offers its bravest customers. We have also tried to make it even bigger.
While I wait for Khalid to finish my burger, I talk to Andrian Morales, responsible this day for Bentley's on Calle Alcalá in Madrid. She shows me the Hall of Fame, the restaurant's hall of fame. On the walls are photos of everyone who has eaten their one-kilo hamburger. Rows of smiling people, spare, who look as if they were the Nobel prizes of a prestigious university or pichichis of a League championship of the last century.
If I get it I will enter this club and they will also give me a commemorative shirt. I would love to get it because I haven't won anything competitive since the 1991 intercourse school championship. Inside this mural of trophies there is an Olympus separated from the rest in which shines the American Randy Santel, considered the king of hamburgers, who in an exhibition in the place ate one of 3.2 kilos as who takes a flag of pickles. Also posing is Guillermo Marquina, the hyperproteic Usain Bolt and winner of the championship of kilo hamburger eaters. He finished his in 4 minutes and 22 seconds.
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GastroGonzo.
What does the exclusive and delicious coffee taste like... shitty
- Writing: RODRIGO TERRASA Madrid
- Writing: PHOTOGRAPHS: SERGIO ENRÍQUEZ-NISTAL
- Writing: VIDEO: DANIEL IZEDDIN
What does the exclusive and delicious coffee taste like... shitty
GastroGonzo (II).
A tasting menu at Spain's filthiest Chinese restaurant
- Writing: QUICO ALSEDO Madrid
- Writing: PHOTOGRAPHS: ANTONIO HEREDIA
A tasting menu at Spain's filthiest Chinese restaurant
I take a pankreoflat to avoid upsets when I return to the newspaper to conclude my workday. It is chemical heating. The physique is based on hunger: I have only had a coffee for breakfast and I feel at two in the afternoon like a Serengeti hyena in times of drought.
For the appointment I have done my homework. I have contacted through The Hunger Agency with Jorge González, better known as Joe Burgerchallenge, star in social networks for his sidereal food challenges. I go on the hunt for advice and he explains his strategy to me. "I don't prepare in any way," he explains, causing my disappointment while waiting for a magic trick. "I do the same thing as every day of my normal routine: fasting, exercise and good hydration." And he adds: "You either have the capacity or you don't."
Do I have it? It's hard to put yourself in my place if we take into account that Joe has come to dive a hamburger of 3.7 kilos and has spent 24 hours eating pizza on every corner on his last trip to New York. Of its challenges, the one that has impressed me the most is the intake of the so-called double sandwich of death. We are talking about an aircraft carrier-mode sandwich that is filled with 27 meatballs battered with panko, a thick sauce of two kilos of tomato and 500 grams of onion and a good handful of jalapeños.
My morale collapses when they bring me the hamburger that Khalid has prepared and the dish rests on the table with the forcefulness of a Hercules that lands at the military base of Torrejón de Ardoz.
So I silently recite Joe Burgerchallenge's words as if it were the sermon on the carnivorous mountain: "The rhythm depends on one's ability to swallow, the amount of saliva one produces, and the strength of the jaw." Are you talking about me or a great white shark? Joe continues, "The important thing is not to stop chewing so that the brain doesn't think you've stopped eating."
Word from Joe, praise be to my future after-dinner.
The first objective is that the hamburger is not dismantled. The meat is good. I chew like a western rustler chewing tobacco. With my little finger I hold the onion rings that scatter like spaghetti down a drain. I can't avoid the dripping of fat, which makes up a lipid sunscreen in my hand and asterisks in a blood test to measure cholesterol.
The rhythm depends on one's ability to swallow, the amount of saliva and the strength of the jaw.
Joe Burgerchallenge
Everything goes well until after a few minutes my brain launches an alert when my eyes are fixed on the plate of chips, which is part of the challenge. There are not many, but the effect is disheartening. "It's too much," I think.
No! Joe Burgerchallenge with his biblical prophet beard and apostolate guides me through his advice to never stop chewing. I resort to all the santoral of the viral tragaldabas of the internet that I have discovered to make the report. As Joe confirmed to me, the greatest are Randy Santel himself, who smiles at me from his photo hanging on Olympus, the Brazilian Ricardo Corbucci and Joel Hansen, a reference from Canada. Stars with millionaire audiences and supernatural abilities in the art of digestion of the boa constrictor.
I decide to disassemble the hamburger by pulling knife and fork. The parts for the whole. The whole for the parts. It doesn't work. I go for bacon and lettuce. The two steaks of meat are so thick that I notice that their chewing brings me closer to a gregarious bird of the Tour de France. More water, please.
Time passes, but this is not about stopwatch. It is not a problem of ingestion, but mental. I begin to feel like the first victim, the one with gluttony, of Seven's psychopathic murderer.
Good thing Joe Burgerchallenge isn't looking at me, because I'm afraid he would frown disappointed with my performance. The photos of successful clients that sit on me accuse me of being a loser.
After eating less than three quarters of a hamburger I take out a paper napkin as a white flag. Glory will have to wait. Again.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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