THE LONG-FORM
BURRITO CHAMPION
OF THE WORLD
(excerpt)

THOMAS BURKE

A tough act to swallow

At the New Year’s party I attended last year, everyone was talking about a cookoff that had happened the weekend before, one that apparently everyone but me had taken part in—a cold hot dog salad cookoff. Conversations orbited around unusual questions, like whether or not to cook precooked wieners for a salad, and what had really differentiated the four hot dog ceviche entries.

Then, about an hour after the ball dropped, the mastermind of the cook-off presented an Oreo cream cake made from the creamy centers he’d scraped out of several dozen Double Stufs. It was piled high and molded, then drizzled with a Lambrusco reduction. He called it the Oriole.

“That’s Tim,” the host told me. “He’s a competitive eater. You know, like the Nathan’s hot dog contest? Have you ever seen that on TV?”

He then walked me across the room to the television console and showed me his copy of Major League Eating: The Game, for Nintendo Wii.

This is Tim’s eater profile for the video game—collected information, I would learn, that is all based on fact:

 

Tim Janus

aka: Eater X

New York, NY

Age: 31

Weight: 165 lbs

 

Forced to wear a mask to conceal his inner torment, Eater X is currently the number-four-ranked eater in the world. A professional stock trader by day, Eater X has shown up at contests in all sorts of disguises. He’s called himself the Whaler, the Invisible Man, and also competed in a bikini. At the World Posole Eating Championship, Janus assumed the personality and dress of Helen Haggerty, a fictional field hockey player from Bryn Mawr College.

Tim’s cartoon likeness was also there in the video game, proof that I was indeed partying with the number-four competitive eater in the world. I was intrigued—enough so that I even considered trying a slice of the Oriole.

Tim is the titleholder in six categories recognized by the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE): tamales¹, cannoli², tiramisu³, long-form burritos⁴, ramen noodles⁵, and Nigiri sushi⁶. Throughout his childhood, Tim kept secret tabs on how many slices of pizza he could eat per sitting, slowly increasing his intake over time. He drinks at least two liters of Pepsi One soda every day, which he often sloshes back straight from the bottle; he craves flavor, hates water, and is very calorie conscious. He has experimented with a lot of unusual foods; he once ate a raw chicken breast because of his insatiable culinary curiosity (incidentally, he says its taste and texture are akin to sashimi).

 

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1. 71 tamales in 12 minutes by Tim Janus on September 1, 2007.
2. 26 large cannoli in 6 minutes by Tim Janus and Cookie Jarvis (tied) on September 15, 2006.
3. 4 lbs tiramisu in 6 minutes by Tim Janus on March 5, 2005.
4. 11.81 lbs long-form burritos in 10 minutes by Tim Janus on September 22, 2007.
5. 10.5 lbs ramen noodles in 8 minutes by Tim Janus on October 27, 2007.
6. 141 pieces of nigiri sushi in 6 minutes by Tim Janus on April 11, 2008.