"heart attack grill" news and stories

Blair River, the 575-pound spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill, an Arizona restaurant famous for menu items like "triple bypass burgers" and "flatliner lard fries," died Tuesday at the age of 29 following a bout of the flu, reports ABC News.

River was well-known in the community, both for his winning personality and large size. He came down with the flu last week and succumbed to pneumonia after four days in the hospital, Jon Basso, owner of the grill and a friend of River, told ABC News.

Basso said he thought River's obesity contributed to his death, and Keith Ayoob, director of the nutrition clinic at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, agreed that was likely, telling ABC News, "Obesity increases your risk for just about every condition, and it can make nearly every acute health problem worse."

• Read five surprising facts about Blair River at AOL News.

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.)

A Texas-based sports bar is launching a full-frontal assault on Hooters' dominance in the scantily-clad server category, announcing plans to take its "bikini babe" concept nationwide.

"Our competition has been getting stale," says Doug Guller, who opened his first Bikinis Sports Bar and Grill in North Austin in 2006. "If they're Microsoft, we're Apple."

Guller isn't the only entrepreneur who suspects Hooters' sovereignty is waning: Heart Attack Grill, with its sexy "nurse-waitresses" and the Tilted Kilt chain, where servers wear tartan bras and short skirts, are among the more notable recent attempts at improving upon the concept pioneered back in 1983 by Hooters, a chain that's lately been getting attention for its struggles in Vegas and less-than-flattering cameo appearance on Undercover Boss.

"The market is growing," Guller confirms.

An Arizona restaurateur is suing the owners of an eatery in Florida, accusing them of stealing his idea for a heart-attack-inducing menu.

In the federal lawsuit, Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso contends that the pair behind Heart Stoppers Sports Grill in Delray Beach took his concept for a restaurant with unhealthy, cholesterol-raising fare, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

"Heart Attack Grill is the originator of the medically themed hamburger grill and restaurant," the paper quoted Basso's lawyer, Robert Kain, as saying. "It sells high-calorie food products and we have had very extensive media coverage, including numerous shows on the Travel Channel and the Food Network."

My Culinary Degradation post, which ran in February, inspired a fair bit of competition among my readers. While I managed to come up with a few moderately-disturbing food choices, my readers really ran with the idea, suggesting outrageous beer and ice cream combinations and fried foods that bordered on blasphemy. Last, but not least, they also suggested some monster burgers that strained the imagination, not to mention the digestive system.

I'm no stranger to big burgers, having worked my way through Red Robin's entire menu, but the Heart Attack Grill's Quadruple Bypass Burger is far, far out of my league. With four 1/2-pound patties, four slices of bacon, three slices of cheese, lettuce, and tomato, it is estimated to contain 8,000 calories. While I can't think of a lot of reasons to visit Chandler Arizona, I may still have to make a visit.

One reader, Astin, recommended Dangerous Dan's, a restaurant in Toronto. Their "Colossal Colon Clogger Combo" contains 24 ounces of beef, a quarter pound of bacon, a quarter pound of cheese, and two fried eggs. For $23.95, it comes with a large shake and a side of gravy and cheese curd-laden fries.