Canada's 35-Pound Burger

A Compacted History of the Bigger Burger War
Call her the face that launched a thousand shits. In February, 100-pound college girl Kate Stelnick (right) finished the six-pound burger at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, and a minor media storm whipped up around her. Catching wind of that, a New Jersey diner upped the ante with a 12.5-pound burger. In a dangerous game of brinkmanship, Denny's came back with a 15-pound burger.

Then a South Carolina grill got into the fracas, offering a 19-pound burger gigantic enough to leave its rivals shocked and awed—and its customers stopped up.

But now the ugly melee is going international, with a Canadian greasy spoon among the latest combatants to go nuclear in the Battle of the Bulging Burger. Ian's Kitchen & Soda Shoppe in Kingston, Ontario, threw its best minds into top gear and they emerged from the bowels of the skunk works with a burger that tips 20 pounds without toppings. (Three and a half pounds of Denny's 15-pounder are from toppings.) From AZCentral.com:

[Restaurant owner Ian] Sarfin's creation — which took more than three hours to cook Thursday morning — weighs almost 21 pounds.

"You're looking at an 18-inch diameter bun (and) there's a pound of cheese, there's a pound of onion, there's a pound of pickels, there's two pounds of tomatoes and five cups of sauce," said Sarfin. "Once you add it all together, you're looking at about 30-35 pounds total weight." ...

Sarfin said his hamburger — the equivalent of just over 100 quarter-pounders — is designed to feed 20 or 25 people.

To carry our mixed metaphors a bit further, it looks like this burger promises to be one helluva bunker buster, at least to those pooper-troopers stationed in the latrine.

A Hamburger Today likes to think we have friendly relations with our neighbors to the north, but we cannot stand for this steal-the-flag gambit on the part of wily Ontarians. Work should begin immediately on a bigger, better, 50-pound U.S.-based sandwich capable of deterring our enemies from such hostile acts of hamburgerism. We humbly propose a name for this next-generation whopper of a weapon: The Colon Pow!

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