Third Trip - April 2011

I feel like this next restaurant was the turning point where we actually started searching for food places and planned trips to go there.

Jon and I were watching Outrageous Foods with Tom Pizzica and saw a challenge that Jon couldn’t resist.  “The Terminator” was a 2 foot pancake (about 2 inches thick), topped with 1 pound of bacon, 1.5 pounds of red potato hash browns, 6 pieces of toast, 6 sausage patties, and 6 eggs cooked to order.  435 people had tried this challenge, and all had failed.  There was no time limit for this challenge, but you couldn’t go to the bathroom while still trying to complete it.

Jon dramatically announced that he was going to do this challenge and figured most people doubted he would try.  I think he made it his goal in life to participate in this eating contest.  He wanted to prove everyone wrong that he would go down to FL to eat this monstrosity and finish it.  I can’t tell you how many times I heard about this challenge and how easy it would be to finish, prior to making the plans for the trip.

The show featured Shelby’s Kitchen & Deli in Deerfield Beach, FL. 

Since Linds had just moved down to Miami in January, Jon was eager to Google the distance between Miami and Deerfield Beach.  He decided prior to us looking up the distance, that if Shelby’s was within 5 hours of Miami, we would go.  To our surprise, Deerfield Beach is 40 minutes away from Miami!  We set out to plan a vacation to visit Linds in April and planned a meal at Shelby’s.

We ended up bringing along Mrs. B, Peej, and Rufus (their dog) on this trip.  And yes, we drove…22 hours straight down to Miami…with a dog between Jon and I in the backseat for most of the trip.

We got down to Linds’s house on Friday April 15^th.  Lindsay’s place had an outdoor pool, and was walking distance to the ocean.  She lives on Key Biscayne, which is like a little island paradise near the hustle and bustle of Miami.  We swam in the ocean and her pool, played tennis on her island where the Sony Ericsson tennis tournament is held, went to Nasa Space Center with a group of teens enrolled in a Saturday Museum camp that Linds was in charge of, and went to a lot of neat places to eat.



Tennis

 

our feet in the pool :)



waiting for the girls to finish shopping...



I don’t remember the exact day, but we waited for Linds to get off work and piled in the car (with Rufus) and headed to Deerfield Beach for dinner.  We got there about an hour and a half prior to closing time.  We were told that it takes a while to make the pancake, and based on the time we arrived, they wouldn’t let Jon try it that evening.  We were all bummed and had to leave and find another place to eat dinner.  We ended up down the street from Shelby’s at a BBQ joint that was fantastic.  We sat outside on picnic tables and Rufus stayed close by near Peej’s feet…waiting for the guaranteed scraps to be handed to him.

The next day we decided to try Shelby’s again, with the stipulation that we left the second Linds got home from work to make it there with time to eat.  We had told them the night before that we were from Ohio and we would be back the next night around a certain time.  When we arrived, they had already started working on getting the items ready and the pancake was cooking on the griddle.




Outside of Shelby's

  Once people heard Jon was going to do the challenge, people started to peer in the window near our table, and the diners inside were anxious to see the beastly pancake.

They brought out the following:



Jon waiving to the people outside watching



It was HUGE!!!  It was enough breakfast food for 20 people…and Jon was going to eat it all by himself.

He gave it a valiant effort, eating all of the bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, and nibbled on the pancake.  I kept the friends at home updated with picture texts and status updates.  He was in the middle of eating the bacon when he told us that he would finish the bacon, but would then have to stop.

ready to dominate

slow chewing

scooping in the eggs

looking pretty defeated...

During this eating event, we found out that people had come close to finishing. We asked who had come the closest to finishing.  To our surprise it was a woman in her early 60’s who was a retired fire fighter.  She had eaten all the toppings, and cut the huge pancake into 8 slices like a pizza.  She stopped with 1 slice left.  How amazing to think of that when you see what Jon accomplished.

He ended up waiving a white flag napkin, they boxed up his leftovers, which are still being eaten today ;)

Pancake wins...Jon was number 436.

We ended up eating his meal over the next few days, and there was even some left for Linds when we headed back to Ohio days later.

This trip was great, and was the start to a fantastic year of food travels J