Sunday, December 03, 2006

Home Slice-O-Rama


This weekend, good friend and prodigious eater, Chris Floyd competed in a high profile eating contest. A popular new pizza joint in the trendy South Congress district (SoCo for short), hosted the Home Slice-O-Rama.

This was essentially a pizza carnival with events including a dough tossing challenge, a "hands on an eggplant sandwich" endurance contest, raffles, cheap local microbrews, and, most importantly, a serious pizza eating contest.

For those who don't know Chris, he is a world-class eater. I've seen this guy eat two pounds of chicken fried steak and gravy in 8 minutes. He's beaten ranked professional eaters. And, more than one pizza buffet has had a profitable month crash into red ink after a visit from Chris.

So, it was crucial to get Chris into this eating contest, especially since the prize had been announced as free pizza for a year. More importantly, this would be another notch in Chris's belt as a professional-caliber gustatorial athlete.

The Slice-O-Rama was jumping and crawling with hipsters and the types of folks who help to Keep Austin Weird on a daily basis. There was an electricity in the air building up to the clash of the eaters.

The contest was a brutal war of mastication fortitude, owing to an unexpectedly dense, leathery crust. All nine competitors struggled mightily, especially at the crusty ends of each piece. In a sadistic twist, the contest organizers had added a rule, "No wetting or dunking the crust in water."

Chris led for most of 30 minutes, employing a savage ripping technique to counter the uncooperative rock of gibraltar-like crust. He only paused briefly to play to the standing room only crowd which included a large contingent of his own fans.

In a photo finish, thanks to a last-second mouth cram, Chris took home the prize. We all win with this one. For the next year, he gets a free large pizza any time he visits Home Slice. Bringing friends along is encouraged.

Overall, it was a great event. Congratulations, Big Chompy.

More photos are here:
Slice-O-Rama Album

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Big Chompy here.......

I couldn't have done it without the tremedous crowd support. Viva la free pizza!!!!!!!!!!

Chris said...

Big props to a big eater. We are very excited to help you maximize the economic gain from your prize.

Anonymous said...

DRS here:

Dude. Every time I read this page, I miss you guys more and more. I can only imagine the grumbles that ensued following that cram session. Eat away big chompy!

Chris said...

It's all good in Austin. If you get too lonely out there, we can organize a trip westward..

There was a little bit of grumbling about the mouth cram. Chris was chewing for, no exagerration, about 5 minutes after the contest ended.

Anonymous said...

Vato here.

Congrats on the win. It looks well deserved. I'm going to look and see if there is an eating competition out here. You need to take these west coast suckas down.

Nice pics sieber..

Sarah said...

Ok, so I am waaaay behind on my blog-reading. But I DID hear about Chris F's amazing win the day of the contest. I am proud to know you, Chris. :)