This Is the Biggest Steak You Can Get for Free If You Can Actually Eat All of It

The eating competition is a beloved pastime that’s both a celebration of excess and a massive fuck you to every impoverished nation and family in the world. I don’t know exactly why it’s turned into such an enduring test of intestinal strength, but if I had to guess, it’s the combination of awe and accessibility. It’s pretty hard to imagine yourself as a world champion pole-vaulter, but you can dream up a scenario where you might be able to put away a disgusting amount of food. 

It’s basically a cultural touchstone of the modern man, serving as the basis of entire TV shows like Man vs. Food and being featured in movies like The Great Outdoors, where John Candy attempts to take down the “Old 96’er.”

This contest, in particular, contains two of the most popular bits of an eating challenge: 1) the idea that if you’re able to complete it, the meal is free; and 2) the featured meal — steak. Obviously, for the movie, the weight of 96 ounces, or 6 pounds, was intended to be so outlandish as to be unreasonable. Which makes you wonder, if you’re a true min-maxer with absolutely no regard for your toilet (and stomach), what’s the biggest possible steak you can eat in order to have your bill wiped clean along with your plate?

By my count, there are three. The first is the largest, but unfortunately, the restaurant that offers it, Gregory's Steakhouse in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is no longer in business. No word on whether the challenge contributed to that, but if you finished their 120-ounce (7.5-pound) steak, the meal was free. 

The second one, at Kelsey's Steak House in Valparaiso, Indiana, attempts to recreate the Great Outdoors scene pound-for-pound — if you’re willing to give them three days’ notice and put down a $50 deposit. In what’s never not an entertaining twist, you also have to finish a soup or salad, a side of your choice and a hilariously mean kicker: one slice of bread. There’s a one-hour time limit as well.

The final challenge doesn’t totally count because you still have to pay for the steak, but I’m including it anyway. This is the Wall of Fame Challenge at Ward’s House of Prime in, of course, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (It’s called the Wall of Fame Challenge because you get your caricature on the wall if you conquer it.) What started with one particularly hungry customer wanting a 40-ounce steak and the restaurant offering to put his face on the wall if he finished it, is now an open challenge to break a constantly evolving record, one that’s been raised so high your gullet will cinch closed in horror. In fact, the record involves so much steak that it, arguably, ceases to be steak, and becomes prime rib, which is the greater cut of meat that ribeye steaks are sliced from. 

The current record is held by competitive eater Molly Schuyler, who ate 360 ounces, or 22.5 pounds, of prime rib there.

That’s enough to make even an airplane toilet shudder.