Heart Attack Grill's Come-on: Weigh More, Save More

by Jason Best, Posted Nov 11th 2010 @ 2:00PM

Heart Attack Grill, Double Bypass burgers Photo: ejharaldseid, Flickr

How about this for a thumb in the eye to America's obesity epidemic: the Heart Attack Grill in suburban Phoenix, Arizona. According to its slogan, it's "taste worth dying for."

The over-the-top restaurant features four tiers of death-defying burgers, from the Single Bypass to an unwieldy tower of four thick patties, the Quadruple Bypass. Customers (called "patients" here) are invited to round out their meal with a side of Flatliner Fries and Jolt cola, followed by Lucky Strike unfiltered cigarettes. "Patients" are cared for by "nurses" (at a place like this, everything seems to need ironic quotes), who appear more like Hooters girls than licensed health-care practitioners. Funny, though, how the "nurses" are all thin and curvy. Maybe the grill doesn't give its employees the same encouragement to power-eat that it does its customers.

As owner Jon Basso, decked out in a lab coat and stethoscope, puts it in a video on the restaurant's website: "No dangerous yo-yo syndrome. I personally guarantee a stable, upward progression of body weight while you're enjoying great tasting foods like a Double Bypass burger and Flatliner Fries. Along with a cold beer and cigarettes, it's a diet program you can stick to for life. (Back in February, Slashfood reported on Basso's legal fight that he was the originator of the "unhealthy" diet plan.)

And now, Basso has pushed the envelope even further: anyone who weighs more than 350 pounds eats for free. (It's probably a bit dubious as a business strategy to give away your product to your "biggest" customers, but okay...)

As if to add another heaping serving of irony to a story already laden with it, as TODAYshow.com reports, Basso used to own a chain of Jenny Craig Weight Loss Centers and worked as a personal trainer. Yet the former fitness guru said that he had an ah-ha moment of his own when Oprah Winfrey announced that she was done with dieting.

"My background is in trying to motivate people to better themselves," Basso told TODAYshow.com. "Strangely enough, I think that I'm now doing more to motivate people to better themselves. I'm giving them a more realistic outlook and reason to smile, laugh and have fun. I do recall some of the people being on a diet who were fighting such depression due to the fact that they couldn't stick to the diet...I've kind of let them - quote-unquote - come out of the closet and simply be themselves as the imperfect beings that we all are."

Filed Under: Fast Food, Chain Stores / Restaurants
Tags: fast food, heart attack grill, obesity

Chew on This

Royal Wedding Cake Details Revealed! - YumSugar

Make Your Own Pop Tarts - CHOW
Denny's Introduces a Maple Bacon Sundae - Eater
Whole Foods Opening Bars in Stores - USA Today
Rules Of Bar Etiquette -- For The Bartender - HuffPost Food

Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

11-14-2010 @8:22PM John F.C. Taylor said... Anyone that watches television has already seen this place. One of those shows on the Travel Channel if I remember correctly.
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

11-14-2010 @9:25PM janet said... I wish I lived close to this place. The food, and cigs probably don't stress your body nearly as much as worrying about it does.
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

11-14-2010 @9:47PM JohnWalkerSC said... I would love to get my hands on some Jolt Cola" real sugar and twice the caffine" soda pop. you can not find it in the East anywhere!!!!
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

11-14-2010 @10:20PM Ernie said... Way to go Joe !!! Just what" REAL" Americans want and need to get back to the American way of life.
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

11-14-2010 @10:26PM Sartana said... I've just been diagnosed as diabetic so now I really have to watch what I eat. I guess that leaves this restaurant off my schedule when I visit Phoenix next March. When you consider all the good things you can eat on a diabetic diet, it's not all that bad. But a big greasy heart-crushing hamburger with fries and cold beer sounds pretty good right about now.
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

11-14-2010 @10:58PM Gizmologist said... Well at 358 lbs I guess I will be heading there ASAP. I will pass on the cigs though.
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

11-14-2010 @11:47PM Joe Papierz Jr said... In spite of numerous articles in the papers and in AOL and TV Specials about the health dangers of eating poorly people will still flock to a restaurant that has food that tastes good. Colesteral be damned, I'm hungry and I want a hamburger with flavor. That means fat with a side of fries, salted please. Nothing wrong with that. Nobody is forcing me to eat there three times a day. I can do without the cutsey names this restaurant has adopted though.
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

11-15-2010 @12:32AM john said... Just wondering why the article says "JOLT COLA" and the picture clearly shows a "COCA COLA".
BTW: The phrase for JOLT was "All the sugar, twice the caffeine"
I had the idea for a place like this, also with "cutsey" names for the various menu items, about 20 years ago but didn't think it'd go over well.....I just didn't think to go with the nurse and doctor outfits. Oh well, As they say, "Hindsight is 20-20!"
(LUCKY STRIKE, Unfiltered??? They still make those things?? Our Scout Master smoked those things back in the 60s....they STUNK! (stank?)...smelled awful!)
Reply