Some people are destined to be government leaders or world-class athletes. Some are destined to spend 25 to life in prison for slitting a banker's throat. Others are destined to run a small gas-and-go in Calhoun County, Illinois, where the natives can spot deer at night with their naked eyes. Still others are hardwired from birth to get married in their 20s, have a lovely family, and make an honest living selling Ultimate Fighting pants in Denver.
David Belisle
This editor prepped for his 72-ounce steak with two glasses of bourbon. No comment on his pre-editing ritual.
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Wedgwood Broiler 8230 35th Ave. N.E., 523-1115, WEDGWOOD. Open 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m. daily. Bar typically stays open until midnight.
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Yet very few are destined to digest a 72-ounce steak in one sitting. I am one of those people. This is my cross to bear.
Until three Thursdays ago, I had failed to pursue my destiny, but I'd been aware of it since I played second base in Coach Pitch. Every couple of weeks or so, after practice, my family would dine exactly one block from home at the Wedgwood Broiler. On the wall near the greeter's podium was a small plaque with a beige slip of paper inside, containing the following words in 1950s typeface: "FREE 72 OZ. STEAK DINNER IF You follow these rules.. .." Notice that the part about the rules drifts into lowercase. Didn't matter anyhow: I never read the rules. I just wanted a shot at that steak.
Trapped in a state of delusional prepubescent arrogance and boasting the metabolism of a hummingbird, I believed with all my heart that I could—and would—complete what is commonly known around Wedgwood as "the Sirloin Challenge" or "the Big One." Neighborhood lore has it that only one man has toppled the Big One in the half-century that the Broiler has been in operation, and that was a good 30 years ago.
Now approaching middle age, the time had come to fulfill my childhood destiny. The time had come to take a shot at the Big One.
Sitting in the lounge of the Broiler three Thursdays ago at approximately 6 p.m., surrounded by friends and family, I quietly downed two glasses of bourbon. (Bourbon makes me hungry.) My father's neighbor asked me if I was nervous. Indeed I was; I explained that normal meals are like practice, while the meal I was about to eat was a championship game.
Earlier that day, at a table outside Stan's Drive-In on Rainier Avenue, I'd unwrapped what would undoubtedly be the most important bacon double cheeseburger of my life. For the past week or so, my "training" for the Sirloin Challenge had been to eat as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted, so as to expand my stomach capacity in the run-up to the event. This being game day, some had suggested that I break my routine and maybe have a salad for lunch. Not a chance, I reasoned: Stick with the regimen; the regimen was working. I inhaled the bacon burger like it was a Ritz cracker and confidently walked the two miles back to my office in the shining sun, a long day's journey into the biggest of nights.
But behind the challenge of eating the Big One lurked another dilemma: how to make things interesting for the dozen or so spectators who'd vowed to come root me on. The solution: Invite the world's two strongest men to dinner. In a bit of channel-surfing serendipity, I learned from ESPN that the world's second strongest man was a gentleman named Jesse Marunde, and that Marunde lived in Sequim. The 320-pound Marunde and his peers don't measure their strength via squat thrusts and bench presses, they do it by tossing full kegs over 10-foot bars on a beach in China, lifting 600-pound logs off the ground and pushing them into upright positions, and jogging around with 300-pound anvils like they're briefcases.
Turns out, Marunde was already scheduled to be in the Seattle area in early April for a promotional visit, during which he and 1998 Strongman champion Magnus Samuelsson would pull a 32,000-pound antique fire truck through the parking lot of a Bellevue G.I. Joe's. Better yet, neither Marunde nor Samuelsson—an affable Swede who's slightly taller and more chiseled than his younger stateside counterpart—had plans for the evening of April 5, and they accepted my invitation to take the Sirloin Challenge alongside me.
But about those rules I'd always ignored: They're a motherfucker. As if it isn't enough to simply consume a 72-ounce steak over the course of an evening, the contestant must do so in under an hour without leaving his table—which he must occupy sans companionship. Worse yet, it's not just the steak he has to put down; he must eat an entire "Winner's Dinner" as well, a daunting assemblage of chow that includes a dinner salad, a cup of soup, a dinner roll, 10 French fries, a glass of tomato juice, a cup of tea, and a bowl of raspberry sherbet.
And what do you get for your trouble if you happen to plow through it all? You get what you ate, for free—no trophy besides the noggin-sized slab in your gut that might take days to digest. Fail and you forfeit the $75 per meal deposit that must be paid in full prior to service.
