Three students from the Minnetonka VANTAGE Digital journalism class took the world of food challenges by storm. The world of food challenges that test a person’s stomach capacity, mental strength, and sensitivity to extreme temperature. All these challenges have brought great publicity amongst locals, but few have conquered them. Diego Nunez, Lucas Chow, and Ben Walton each chose a food challenge in the St. Paul area from an appetizer, the main entree, and a dessert. 

Behold, our three course meal:

The Appetizer by Diego Nunez

        For the appetizer, I decided to go with the “Hot D*mn” wing challenge at the Nook. The challenge is to eat 14 wings doused in habanero pepper sauce in just 20 minutes with no water. And these aren’t some dainty wings plucked the first bird that they found on the street… No. These chickens were fed nothing but hormones and other weaker chickens until they grew to the size of velociraptors.

            Going through the wings of death was an experience like no other. As the capsaicin from the habanero sauce entered the TRPV1 receptors in my tongue sent out signals to my brain as if to say “Why? What kind of being would willingly subject themselves to such pain and horror?” Nevertheless, I pressed on. By wing seven, I felt my stomach rumble like the San Andreas Fault line. With each additional bite the flavor of the wings overwhelmed me more and more. “It’s too much flavor,” I uttered, holding back the urge to puke. By wing 14, I felt that the end was near. My stomach was filled to the brim, and I didn’t have the physical capacity to go on. But like Genghis Khan, I stared those last two wings in their stupid wing faces, and ended their whole careers.

            Clocking in at 16 minutes and 32 seconds, I immediately reached for that ice cold cup of water that had been taunting me the whole time. I heard vague noises of what sounded like congratulations from my fellow team members, but I was too disoriented to tell. When I came back from washing my sauce stained face, I was greeted with my trophy. And by trophy, I mean a t-shirt that felt like it was made out of a potato sack. Regardless, I took that shirt with pride and walked out with my head high. Now that Lucas and Ben were done entertaining themselves on my suffering, it was my turn to sit back and watch as Lucas’s smile turned to ashes.

The Entrée by Lucas Chow

The main course came with the heaviest amount of food, a 10 pound bowl of Pho. As we walked up to iPho by Saigon, the sinking feeling of my stomach, compounded by the fact that I had not eaten for 16 hours, intensified. As a Bowl the size of four checkerboards was set before me, I knew this wasn’t a human portion of food. No, this was meant to feed something the size of an elephant. Beef from a cow’s entire midsection lined the noodles that would have filled its stomach to the brim. As I dropped the jalapeno peppers in, I readied myself for the ensuing challenge. I had 45 minutes to gain 10 pounds.

Immediately after the first few bites, I knew that the challenge was much harder than it seemed, and it already looked absolutely impossible. The noodles were growing in size as time went on — every time I took a bite, the noodles would absorb the broth replacing the space of what I had just ate. The temperature of the noodles burned my tongue until I couldn’t taste anymore. Most prominently, the sluggishly slow progress intensified my feeling of despair. 

Through the swelling, the heat, and the despair, I kept going. Every bite I took tasted less and less like pho. Oddly enough, a minty flavor replaced the original. I kept eating and kept eating. I ate the entire 45 minutes of the challenge, but to no avail. By the end the only taste I could taste was the pho trying to make its way back up. I left iPho defeated, demoralized, and 7 pounds heavier.

The Dessert by Ben Walton

            Last, but certainly not least, I chose to attempt the Holy Crepe Challenge by Sota Hot & Cold. Sota Hot & Cold is a thai rolled ice cream shop located in St. Paul. What is thai rolled ice cream you ask? It’s essentially homemade ice cream mixed together on a freezer plate with any topping of your choosing. Aka, I’ll never eat regular ice cream the same again.

The Holy Crepe Challenge that owner Pheng Vang created consists of five of their speciality ice creams on top of three layers of crepes, and oh yeah, I only had twenty minutes to eat it. I opted to pick the speciality ice creams with fruit to keep as many carbs as I could down, along with one that was made with espresso to give me an energy boost. We even got a behind the scenes look of their whole operation. As I watched the rolls stack higher and higher atop the mountain of crepes, I couldn’t help think, “Why we did we chose the person that’s somewhere on the spectrum of being lactose intolerant to attempt this challenge?”

As the twenty minute clock began its countdown, I couldn’t decide where to start. It was either the, what seemed liked, endless mounds of ice cream tubes, or the amount of sugar filled candies and cookies that would make your dentist filthy rich. I will admit, the first five minutes I really enjoyed my discovery of these little ice cream cylinders. But once my mouth temperature dropped, that quickly changed. I tried to give my mouth a rest from the ice cream with some of the topping such as Oreos or the strawberry shortcake, but they quickly ran out. My body began to shiver and I wasn’t even half way done. My mouth became so cold, I’m pretty sure the water I drank in between each bite was going down my throat frozen. With five minutes to go, I finally got down to the bottom of the ice cream, but still had three unnecessarily large crepes to devour. At this point, any normal person would have called it quits. Apparently, I’m not normal. With under one minute remaining, I folded up those behemoth crepes and started shoveling down whatever I could. When the timer went off, I barely had a dent in the first crepe. I sat there in defeat as the puddle of what was left of the ice cream was being soaked up by the crumpled up crepes. 

Debrief:

Though we went 1 for 3 in our attempted food challenges, our experience overall was amazing. The opportunity to explore different restaurants around the Twin Cities and see their unique ways of engaging with their customers was extremely enjoyable. We experienced the unique and vibrant atmosphere that was the dining room at the Nook. It felt like home at iPho, with their incredibly nice staff and the type of food you would want any day of the week. And we were enlightened by Sota Hot & Cold’s thai twist on America’s favorite dessert. Are any of us qualified to join the Major League Eating sanctioned group? Absolutely not. Did we have fun attempting what some people may call food torture? Absolutely.