Earlier this month, televisions across the United States tuned in to the Super Bowl, hoping to take part in the country's most celebrated American football match-up, judge the year's greatest TV commercials, and most of all, experience the force of nature that is Beyonce.
But elsewhere in America, food writer Bethany Jean Clement and her cohort were tucking in to a different kind of super bowl. As documented by the Seattle Times, the west coast city's very own Vietnamese restaurant, Dong Thap, was offering a Pho Super Bowl Challenge to its customers.
The competition goes like so: patrons must consume a bowl of phở the size of an infant's bathtub in 90 minutes or less. Containing four liters of broth, four pounds of beef and four pounds of noodles, no one has successfully completed Dong Thap's challenge to date. Clement may have the reason for this: “My research revealed that while estimates of the capacity of the human stomach in a state of distension vary, completing the Pho Super Bowl Challenge is not physiologically possible.”
Still, the incentive is there: victorious eaters are promised a prize of US$100, while the vanquished must suffer a US$40 price tag on their shame. Dong Thap's owners, Nick Bui and Khanhvan Tran, even perform an official weigh-in prior to preparing the enormous bowl of phở.
Check out the video below, in which four courageous phở lovers take on the challenge. Though success is still far off by the 90-minute mark, the table attracts quite a crowd of spectators. As for the rest of us, we'll stick to human-sized portions, thanks.
[Photo via Seattle Times]
