Steve: 0, Beef: 1

I've done some stupid things in the past. Some of them really stupid. This ranks up there with the best of them. My brother convinced me to attempt eating a 72 ounce steak at the Lone Star. It cost $40, but it was one of those, "If-you-can-finish-this-meal-then-it's-free" things. You have to tell them 24 hours in advance so they have time to thaw it out.

I'm no slacker when it comes to eating steaks. I was confident, maybe even a little arrogant about my ability to finish it. I mean, I'll routinely get a 20 ouncer from the butcher, and I thought eating what would equal 4 of them wouldn't be that big of a deal. Holy crap was I wrong. A more forceful defeat at the hands of beef could only include being trampled or gored by an actual bull.

When the waitress brought it out, I couldn't believe the sheer size of this thing. It was a gargantuan brick of flesh and sinew that the establishment offhandedly labeled 'steak'. More like a roast, actually. Never had I seen such an amount of beef that wasn't actually on a cow. I started to doubt my abilities right out of the gate. This steak filled the entire plate save for the space taken up by a slice of pickle and two half slices of toast (I have no idea why they include toast).

It actually came in three pieces, loosely bound by sinew. Two of the pieces, roughly the same size flanked a third, half again the size of one of the others. All of them were about 2 inches thick. I made it through one of the flanking pieces and about halfway through the middle one before the beef topped out my stomach and started to fill my esophagus. I had been defeated by beef.

I got the rest of it to go, gave the half of the big piece to my brother and kept the other whole piece for myself. Maybe I'll eat it tomorrow, but for now, I have had just about as much beef as I can stand.

You can see pictures of the entire ordeal here.

Originally posted on Sunday, 2004-05-23 at 23:06:37.