It's About Time the UK had Some Food Challenges

I'm a very competitive person.

I don't like to lose.

This is a problem for me as I don't tend to excel in many competitive areas. Never the less if I get involved in anything that requires skill, I feel it is my god given right to win. This has, in the past, led to some very uncomfortable moments with friends and loved ones. My problem is that, despite all the evidence, I believe I am brilliant at everything I put my mind to. This in turn leads me to believe that if I am not winning at something then the other people involved must be cheating.  This has led my best friend to storm out of our shared accommodation after a friendly game of computer football when we were 18, and more recently to me shouting out my in-laws, after christmas lunch, because I couldn't beat them at "who wants to be a millionaire".

I envy those that can be competitive and lose without claiming everyone in the room has a vendetta against them. I believe that Adam Richman is one such man. For those of you who don't know Richman presents a tv show in the US called Man v Food. The premise of the programme is that Richman travels from city to city taking on the great american food challenges. Some of the challenges I have seen  include eating a pizza the size of a table, drinking six litres of thick ice cold milk shake, and a burger that was easily the height of a small child.

Through out my youth I had seen such challenges in films and on TV, but it got me thinking why is this only an American thing? To me it seems to be the ultimate marketing tool. Come to our restaurant and see if you can eat two kilos of steak; if you do you eat for free, and if not you have to pay. Now I'm pretty sure that I am not the only stubborn, pigheaded or competitive brit out there. We come from an optimistic country; where we believe we will triumph at every sport, and when we don't we have been known to destroy beautiful european vistas. I say that we should start our own food challenges. We should take on the might of America! The question is where would we start? 

In America there seems to be two options: firstly a quantity challenge, and secondly a heat challenge. I think that we have both these areas in abundance and should put them to the test. I can picture it now: The cafe that can create an english fried breakfast consisting of ten of each item, a curry house that makes a curry so hot you need to wear protective clothing, or a portion of fish & chips that are so large you need to eat them with a shovel; although in yorkshire that is a fairly standard size dish.

We have the ability, we have the food, we have the stupidity and we definitely have the stomach for it. So restaurants of the UK unite, and give us the challenges we deserve!

Anyway if we can't do it, it will only be because someone was cheating...     

 

Comments

[Liam Happe]

Bolton has an infamous cafe breakfast challenge. Marios I think it's called, could be wrong. Also, a friend of mine in Oxford recently did a ghost chilli burger challenge in Atomic Burger up that way. They're popping up gradually thanks to MVFN.