How to Eat a Fat Bastard

Last week I was in St. Petersburg, Florida for a conference and had the pleasure of sampling a number of the many bars and restaurants downtown. Having never been to St. Pete, I can say it’s a pretty sweet town and was probably designed by someone who said, “It’s so fucking hot here all the time, let’s make sure we can just stay inside eating and drinking all day.”

So to you, founder of St. Petersburg, I salute you.

On our final night in town, my co-worker Zach and I visited a restaurant called The Avenue and immediately upon looking at the menu we realized we should have eaten there 1,000 times while we were in town. Honestly there were like 12 things on the menu I was trying to choose from, each more delicious than the next.

For one, they have an entire section of the menu devoted to mac & cheese. It’s not a side item at The Avenue. It’s a main course. They have a bacon cheeseburger mac & cheese. As if each of those things wasn’t fattening enough on its own, The Avenue decided to combine them like some great big gluttonous Power Ranger.

Also, as our waitress is telling us about the menu she mentions we can swap out the beef on any burger with bison. That’s right, bison! It’s as if they determined a great big ole cow just wasn’t filling enough so they decided to take it up a notch. I’m surprised they didn’t offer rhinoceros or hippopotamus burgers.

Seriously, look at this glorious bastard. I want to slather mayo all over it’s back and start licking him as we speak.

Also — random side note — doesn’t that bison look like that kid from the movie “Mask?” It’s pretty close, right?

After scanning the menu for what seemed like hours, I stumble upon a glorious creation that features pulled pork, mac & cheese, barbecue sauce, bacon, and a fried egg. All on Texas Toast. And she was called the “Fat Bastard.” I can honestly say until that night I’d never fallen in love with a sandwich before. But the heart wants what the heart wants, right?

When I tell the waitress I want the Fat Bastard she commends me for the decision. Her eyes light up thinking about her tip on one of the most expensive sandwiches on the menu. But then she says something to me that changed the way I approached the entire meal.

“You’re gonna be hurting after this one.”

Hurting? Who does she think she’s talking to? That’s like telling Michael Jordan to watch out for the Washington Bullets. I’ve never met a sandwich I couldn’t tackle and it wasn’t going to start in St. Petersburg.

“Bring me your biggest Fat Bastard!” I yell out. “And some appetizers. Bring it all!”

Out first appetizer is a bowl of buffalo mac & cheese. And when I say that I mean buffalo chicken, not actual buffalo. Zach puts his entire face in it and starts eating like he hasn’t had a meal in six weeks. Right behind it is a giant bowl of potato chips smothered in bleu cheese crumbles and barbecue sauce. Whoever thought to put those two ingredients on potato chips is a genius. Like a Frito Lay Nostradamus. Within three minutes we’ve eaten every last bit of our apps and anxiously await our entrees.

Zach gets his first. It’s a bison burger with 400 ingredients on it that I didn’t pay attention to when he ordered because I was too busy licking the menu like it was a scratch-and-sniff sticker. On the bison’s heels is the Fat Bastard in all her glory. Just look at that presentation. That thing should be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

The Fat Bastard, in all her glory.

Besides my wife, of course. My wife is much sexier than a sandwich.

I start eating this sandwich and immediately have to call for another napkin. The fried egg yoke starts running everywhere. It and the barbecue sauce are actually starting to soak through the bread making the sandwich unstable. The conversation between Zach and I probably sounded like a guy trying to land a damaged plane in a movie.

“She’s breaking up on me, Zach! I can’t hold her together!” “Don’t you give up on my God dammit! You keep it together, man. You’re almost there!”

Eventually I did give up and had to switch to the fork and knife method. That made the sandwich even more mythical in my eyes. A sandwich so giant and tasty you can’t even pick it up to eat it.

I’m not proud to say I devoured that thing like it was my last meal on Earth. And actually, I’m pretty sure it says something about that possibility on the menu. Like a Surgeon General’s Warning. When our waitress came back to check on how we were doing, I had both arms raised in the air triumphantly while Zach was curled up in the fetal position on the table next to a half-eaten bison burger.

Jason 1 The Avenue 0 Zach -1

We hang out for a few minutes digesting our food while I continue to brag about my conquest. “I’d be hurting after this one?” Child, please. You don’t know who you’re dealing with. No sandwich can take me down.

But then I stood up. And everything changed.

I don’t know if the Fat Bastard had some sort of time delay on it, but suddenly upon standing I felt a degree of full I’d never experienced before. For the first time in my life my stomach was rock hard. If someone had knifed me on the sidewalk I would popped like an over-inflated ginger balloon covered in body hair.

Worse yet, now I have to walk. And somehow I’ve developed a limp. Have you ever been so full that it caused you to limp? I have. I didn’t even know that was possible. A series of belches start to bubble up from beneath and now my vision starts going fuzzy in my right eye. The waitress was right. I was hurting.

Don’t worry, though. This tale doesn’t turn into one of my hilarious poop stories. I was actually way too full for that. Like a woman trying to give birth to a baby that’s too big. I was in need of a C-Section in my B-Section.

I think we might have made it a couple blocks before I asked Zach if he’d carry me the rest of the way. He laughed. I wasn’t joking.

“Zach, I think I’m dying. I ate too much.”

And then without missing a beat, Zach looks straight ahead and says, “You are what you eat,” and then continues to walk ahead without me.

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