"JoeyChestnut" news and stories

Each week we round up some of the best that our friends over at YumSugar are writing. Here are some of the treats from the last week.

• How many classic candies can you name? Take a peek at this slide show and test your knowledge.
• Italy is currently in the throws of a major parmaggiano reggiano crisis.
• The weather is finally turning chilly on the east coast, making it the perfect time for soup!
• At the NYC Food and Wine Fest, Tyler Florence demonstrated the romantic dinner he made for his wife.
• For beginning cooks, an easy chili recipe and for more advanced folks, a recipe to stretch your abilities.
• As far as we know, pot is still not legal tender, even at McDonald's.
• Starbucks unveils their holiday marketing campaign.
• Competitive eater Joey Chestnut wins the World Pizza (eating) Championship.

Source

In the Krystal Square Off III World Hamburger Eating Contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee this past weekend, Takeru Kobayashi brought home another championship title by eating 97 hamburgers in 8 minutes. Joey Chestnut came in second, finishing with 91 hamburgers, followed by Patrick Bertoletti in third with 76. All the numbers are up hugely from last year's contest, in which Kobayashi narrowly beat Chestnut with a final total of 67-62 burgers. One other big change from previous years was that the contest was televised on ESPN2, which gives the sport a much wider audience and much more publicity than it enjoyed before.

The contest is known as the "square off" because the burgers that the competitors wolf down are square, but Krystal's burgers hosts the contest because they have been holding eating contests at their stores since the first one opened in 1932. According to company legend, the tradition was set when the second customer challenged the first customer to a head-to-head hamburger showdown.

Source

Those of you with an interest in competitive eating (you know who you are) might already know of Joey Chestnut's recent record-setting win at this year's Wing Bowl in Philadelphia. I think I might be getting a bit desensitized to the figures that accompany these sorts of competitions, however. Chestnut took down 173 wings in 30 minutes and I'm not trying to downplay that. What truly amazes me, though, is the footage of Chestnut taking down a gallon of milk (looks to be whole milk) in 41 seconds. I'd long thought that to be a physical impossibility. I believe this was some sort of qualifying measure for the Wing Bowl, but I'm not positive on that detail. The Philadelphia Inquirer has more on the entire gristly event.