It seems we have a new National Potato Latke Eating Champion.
In the world of competitive eating, "Furious" Pete Czerwinski is to latkes what the unstoppable 1998 Yankees were to baseball.
None of the other 10 contestants who came to Lake Grove for yesterday's National Potato Latke Eating Championship stood a chance.
Czerwinski - a 6-foot-2, muscle-packed Canadian - downed 46 latkes and was still licking applesauce from his stubble when the eight-minute contest ended. Will Millender, a 380-pound Brooklyn community college student, came in second with 29 latkes.
Czerwinski's demolition of about seven pounds of potato pancakes throughly eclipsed the 31 latkes consumed by Tom "Goose" Gilbert of Massachusetts in 2006 and is a new world record, said Arnie Chapman, chairman of the Association of Independent Competitive Eaters, which sanctioned the event at Zan's Deli.
For Czerwinski, who has been eating competitively for about a year and has shot to the top of the AICE rankings, the win was a textbook case of beginner's luck. He said he had never eaten a latke before.
"I'm just a power eater. My brain never signals that I'm full," said Czerwinski, 23, a mechanical engineering student. Czerwinski took home $300, but most contestants said competitive eating is more about fun than money.
Seven pounds of latkes . . . in eight minutes.
I think I've just developed a case of sympathetic indigestion!
Peter
3 comments:
Trying to wrap my mind around that...it just so happens we had potato pancakes for dinner last night. I was feeling guilty and full for having "just one more"...just can't imagine..42 more.
I'm good for four or five Latkes... thats about it. Even that is more than I should....
30+? Groan!
Maybe I'm wrong, but how many munchkins that most likely went to bed hungry that night could have been fed with that?
Or maybe it's just me being a grouchy old fart.
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