Some challenges on Man v Food were better than others, and some were downright painful
to watch.
It's time to revisit a few of the most crushing defeats and painful victories that Adam Richman
faced while he hosted the show.
Scarfing down 12 wings in just 10 minutes seems doable.
In theory, you should be able to just shove them in your mouth and be done with it.
The problem is that these wings were coated with six ounces of dried habanero pepper and
out of the 9,000 people who have attempted the challenge, 80 percent failed.
The good news is that Richman won, but the sheer pain that he was in during and after
the challenge is enough to make a person think twice about ever eating a hot wing again.
If eating the wings wasn't bad enough, Richman had to lick the thick sauce from his fingers
or be disqualified.
"Fingers!
Fingers!
Fingers!”
Hey, at least it couldn't get any worse, right?
Wrong.
Upon finishing the wings and licking his fingers clean, Richman had to sit in tongue-searing
pain for five minutes before he could extinguish the fire with a glass of milk.
We'd like to tell you that's where the pain ended, but even after the challenge was over
Richman was still pacing around behind the restaurant waiting for the burn to subside.
"Those last five minutes almost killed me, breathing, just moving all those spices around,
and they're still in between my knuckles."
No free T-shirt is worth that sort of pain.
Pancakes have been one of the most popular breakfast foods for ages, but they seem to
feel like sandbags in your stomach.
Richman and the Man Versus Food team traveled to Hawaii just to take on a stack of pancakes
nearly as big as the Pacific Ocean.
Sure, three pounds of pancakes and a pound of toppings looks delicious, but let's be
realistic, eating that many carbs doesn't seem humanly possible.
According to MAC 247's chef, the challenge has less than a one percent success rate.
"Pray for me."
Unfortunately for Richman, he wasn't able to boost that success rate, and halfway through
he hit a syrupy wall.
“In the battle of man versus pancake, today, sadly, food won."
Should you find yourself at MAC 247, don't try and be the big kahuna by ordering this
challenge — just get a short stack like a reasonable person.
Even the most passionate of oyster fans though would likely turn green at the idea of eating
180 of the slippery sea creatures.
With so much good food in the city of New Orleans, sitting down to a plate of 15 dozen
oysters seems like an exercise in stomach sickness.
Nevertheless, that was the challenge that awaited Richman — and it took its toll on
him.
“I feel very queasy."
Over 150 people had tried and 28 had succeeded when this episode premiered in 2009 and Richman
was able to pound through the oysters.
In the end, he did indeed become a member of the 15 Dozen Club.
"In the battle of man versus food, yet again, this one goes to man."
Proceed with caution if you fancy yourself stepping up to the plate at Acme Oyster House.
It pretty much ruined oysters for Richman.
According to the Mirror, he later said,
"[After the oyster challenge] I think I may have had less than a dozen since.
It just turned me off."
Richman was no stranger to burgers while filming Man Versus Food, but none of them could hold
a french fry to the behemoth he would go up against in Michigan.
Known as the Absolutely Ridiculous Burger, it lived up to its name and clocked in at
190 pounds.
With the title of "the biggest burger ever made" there was simply no way Richman would
be able to defeat the goliath on his own.
The solution: recruit a 40-person army of eaters to chew away at the beefy monster.
Despite having hockey players, firefighters, a KISS tribute act, and more fearless volunteers
back him up, you can't help but watch this challenge and doubt they'll finish it before
even a single bite is taken.
The fun of Man Versus Food is that there's a real possibility that the host will beat
his food challenger, but even with 40 people chowing down, they'd each have to eat nearly
five pounds of burger.
The entire room — and everyone watching — seemed to be glad when the challenge and
their meat sweats came to an end with more than 30 pounds of food left, and frankly,
we can't blame them.
"In the battle of Man Versus Food, Detroit Michigan, this round goes to food.”
“BOOOOOOO!”
But not every food fight ends in despair!
More often than not, Richman emerges victorious against the ridiculous foods in front him.
Here are some of his greatest victories.
Richman has certainly faced down his share of spicy challengers over the years and been
brought to his knees by as little as a single chicken wing, so how would he fare against
a tuna roll?
The Hellfire is anything but your ordinary sushi challenge and participants must pass
qualifier rounds of heat before they can even enter Kobe Sushi's seventh ring of fire.
It may be just a tuna roll, but with layers of Thai chilies lined throughout, it's definitely
not a guppy of a challenge.
Fortunately, the challenge has no time limit and Richman was permitted to drink and eat
whatever he wanted to offset the heat.
Considering that Richman looked like he was about to spontaneously combust, it's pretty
remarkable that he advanced to and finished the seventh ring of Hellfire.
This challenge may not be one that the average sushi-lover would be up for trying, but it's
certainly thrilling to watch Richman forge on to victory.
“I am in much pain.
I ate the spicy sushi.
Pray for me, my friends."
Burritos were a recurring nemesis for Richman on Man Versus Food and more than once ended
with food conquering man.
But considering the popularity of burritos, the show kept finding new places with overstuffed
tortillas for Richman to try and defeat.
"I have 90 minutes to devour a six pound, two foot-long burrito."
The four-pound Gigante on its own would have been a worthy opponent for Richman, but he
also had to take down its tag-team partners: a half pound of mac n' cheese and a half pound
of banana pudding.
"I have never wanted to skip dessert so badly."
Nobody had ever entered the ring with the Gigante and come out a winner.
Simply conquering Gigante and winning his first burrito challenge would be enough to
land Richman major accolades.
He took things a step further, however, and devoured half the burrito just five minutes
into the hour-long challenge.
Perhaps it was losing those other burrito challenges, but Richman made sure not to,
in his words, "let painful history repeat itself."
Watching this challenge, you can't help but root along with the Tennessee crowd as he
becomes Gigante's only victor, just 29 minutes in.
Reindeer sausage and Alaskan crab legs weren't exactly common fare on Richman's Man Versus
Food travels, but the unique cuisine of this food challenge places it firmly in our "best
of" category.
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, Richman even confessed that it was his favorite challenge
in the entire series.
"Wait a minute, you’re serving me a meal on a welcome mat…”
“Oh, absolutely.”
The six-pound Alaskan feast includes wild salmon cakes, grilled veggies, and mashed
potatoes along with the crab legs and reindeer sausage.
Oh, and dessert, because after eating three pounds of crab meat you need some ice cream
to top it off.
Richman had 90-minutes to devour the meal fit for a camp of lumberjacks.
"Dozens have tried and none have succeeded.
“None?”
“None.”
“Great odds, awesome, so psyched!"
After spending 15 minutes cracking open the crab legs before getting a single bite, Richman
could have easily been doomed for defeat.
But rather than go back to the lower 48 states with his head hanging in shame, Richman pushed
through to give the Kodiak Arrest its first win.
The saying "things are bigger in Texas" is true to ridiculous proportions at this Texas
steakhouse.
The Big Texan is no stranger to food shows and has appeared on The Great Food Truck Race
and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.
But when this Man versus Food episode premiered in 2008, Richman was still a rookie in the
food competition game.
The 72-ounce steak is the final boss of food challenges and competitors are only given
an hour to eat it.
If gnawing away at what probably seems like an entire cow wasn't daunting enough, Richman
also had to consume a salad, shrimp cocktail, baked potato, and dinner roll.
On the plus side, the meal was free if he finished it all and didn't die.
Woo-hoo!
"This is crazy.”
“This is crazy."
Somehow, the food gods smiled upon Richman that day and he was able to finish not just
the steak, but the full challenge without having a heart attack.
And the icing on top — he did it all in under 30 minutes.
Quantity challenges seemed to be especially tough for Adam Richman, and by the end of
many an episode he looked like he'd been put through the ringer.
At the Ohio Deli, Richman was given the task of eating a comically tall sandwich and pound
of fries.
In an interview with The Guardian, he discussed just how tough bread and potatoes can be.
"If you do a quantity challenge, the problem you'd face would be a starchy challenge.
If it has a lot of potatoes, a lot of bread or fried elements, that's difficult."
While the Dagwood match was far from the biggest challenge — in fact, it was actually one
of his easiest — it lands on our list because it was pivotal for the success of the show.
In an interview with Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern, Richman said it was a real learning
experience and helped him develop specific game plans for the challenges.
“Here's my strategy: I'm going to break this into four mini-sandwiches, and put french
fries right on the sandwich themselves."
If he hadn't stumbled upon a strategy and won this challenge early on, who knows, Man
Versus Food could have been over and done with after a few episodes.
The Kitchen Sink ice cream challenge was a ridiculous two-pound dessert that was loaded
up with eight enormous scoops of ice cream, plus toppings and whipped cream.
It needed to be finished in an hour or less, and only four people had succeeded at the
time of filming, so the odds were definitely not in Richman's favor.
Being able to pick the ice cream flavors had to be a plus, but a starchy strategy proved
to be the real key to defeating this frozen giant.
After hitting a sugar overload, Richman seemed like he may have been down for the count.
“In the words of William Shakespeare, this totally sucks."
But then he ordered fries to contrast the sweetness.
As he pushed forward and drank the last drops of melted ice cream, he declared,
"I'm gonna wrestle it to the ground like a demon cobra."
Some Man Versus Food challenges become a thing of legend — and the Kitchen Sink is one
of them.
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