Well, there’s ONE career I know I won’t have

I like food. A lot. That should come to no surprise to any of you who have spoken to me for more than five minutes. As a result, I spend a lot of my time and visiting websites and watching movies and TV shows related to food. I’m not a picky man; my tastes in food entertainment range in everything from haute cuisine (Good Eats, TasteSpotting, Serious Eats, FoodPornDaily) to the exotic (Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern) to the morbidly grotesque (Super Size Me, This Is Why You’re Fat, Supersized Meals, anything from Paula Deen). I am a huge fan of the TV show Man vs. Food. Honestly, Adam Richman has the best and worst job in the world all rolled into one delicious, steamy tortilla. The man gets paid to go around the country and eat at some amazing restaurants with Herculean challenges, but the nature of the beast rears its ugly head when he has to actually undertake the challenge. He then inevitably fails miserably, whether it’s trying to shove far too much food for his gut to hold or to eat something so spicy that it makes him bleed out his pores. He then takes pounds of Metamucil and/or laxative to get it all out of his system later.

Pho Garden in San Francisco (and now in Mountain View) offers one of the most ridiculous food challenges I have ever seen: one hour to finish two pounds of rice noodles and two pounds of meat. Short of the 72-ounce steak challenge at the Big Texan in Amarillo, TX, this is definitely one of the crazier supersized food challenges I’ve ever seen. Why? When they say two pounds of noodles, they mean two pounds DRY. After it soaks in all that broth, the weight must go up at least, what, double? So really it’s more like eating SIX pounds of food.

“Why the hell would you do this stupid, insane challenge?” you ask. The prize: the meal is free, and you get to KEEP THE BOWL. And this is a NICE BOWL. The Asian in me could not resist the prospect of getting, like, $15 worth of free stuff. I just had to do it.

This past Saturday, SRS and I decided to give Pho Challenge a try. We sat down at a small two-seater table and told the waitress that both of us wanted to do the Pho Challenge. She asked us to move to the big four-seater table because, apparently, the table was not big enough to fit the bowls. This got us a bit scared.
After our forced relocation, the waitress then brought us double-long chopsticks and a freaking ladle. I imagine this is how they feed cows in rural Vietnam.



Then came, of course, the waiver. We basically read through the paper quickly and signed our lives away.



They are not kidding about this. According to the waiver, you’re not even allowed to attempt the challenge unless you’re over 18.

Waivers signed, we eagerly awaited our meal.

I almost passed out when I saw the comically irresponsible amount of food I was about to eat.

I guess you can tell from the expression on my face that I already knew this would not be a pleasant experience.



And here is, of course, my trusty comrade, SRS.

GO GO POWER RANGERS (duuun duuun dun dun dun dun dun) Also, my apologies for inappropriately reppin’ a school I totally did not attend.

The waitress set the timer to sixty minutes and let us go. And I FLEW. My strategery: since the longer the noodles sit, the more liquid they soak up, it would be advantageous to eat the noodles first and worry about the meat later. In retrospect, this may have been a tactical error.

SRS and I did not say a word to each other during the first ten minutes. I had a really good pace going, eating small spoonfuls of noodle at a time, only occasionally sneaking a piece of flank or a beef ball for flavor. I didn’t drink a single spoonful of broth.

I hit my first wall at around 25 minutes in. I took a 30-second break, during which I stood up and removed my belt. Wall gone. Back into the cave we go.

We photodocumented the ceremonious half-point mark. I was NOT a happy camper:


I estimated that I had actually finished about half my food at this point, meaning I was on pace. SRS, on the other hand, threw in the towel at the half-hour mark. He did the smart thing by deciding to just take it easy and to NOT COMMIT SUICIDE BY PHO.

Pretty soon, I was hitting a wall every five minutes. Even chewing became incredibly challenging, and that’s saying something, considering at this point, the noodles were much softer and roughly the consistently of silken tofu. But I pushed on, keeping my eye on the light at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately, the house of cards could not hold. I blew a gasket somewhere in my basement, and with only five minutes and about three ounces of food to go, I booted much of it back up straight into my bowl.


Notice that much of the regurgitated food wasn’t even digested. It just looked like chewed-up versions of the food I had just put in my mouth minutes prior. I guess it had never even reached my stomach acid. That, or my body just plain ran out of digestive juices.

So there’s the unfortunate end of my quest for immortality. I got really, really damn close though. Compare my results to SRS’s attempt:


I think I did pretty damn well considering. We shelled out the $22 each, but at least we got a complimentary T-shirt that asks mockingly, “Got pho challenge?”

I guess my next quest for greatness can come in the form of a fistfight with a crocodile or something. I’m pretty sure it will be more pleasant than this meal.