We Eat Hot Sausages Very, Very Fast (And You Can Too)
Beijing’s First Annual Hot Sausage Eating Competition is this weekend. But staffers at That’s Beijing couldn’t wait quite that long, so they staged a competition of their own.
Can you beat their times? More importantly, what are their times? They downed serious sausage to find out. (Plus, this Saturday, May 14, you’ll have the opportunity to find out your own - for more info click "Read more" at the bottom of this article.)
Here's how the That's version went down. First, the team spooned The Meatball Company’s Ladle & Spice “Hot As Balls” sauce on foot-long Stuff’d sausages. Some chose to douse the buns with it, and others dripped it on the meat itself. There is still office debate as to which is better.
“I was nervous before I started. My heart was beating fast,” says Marketing Manager Justin Culkin. Culkin, however, ought not to have felt nervous – he won with an impressive 2-minute-and-12-second finish.
“It was a right mouthful,” he adds.
Not long after him (28 seconds after him, to be exact), Editor-in-Chief Oscar Holland took his final swallow. In a later moment of reflection, he saids, “Indigestion and sunshine is a potent though curiously satisfying sensation.”
A long silence followed Holland’s finish, as Staff Reporter Dominique Wong and Food and Drink Editor Noelle Mateer diligently put in work on their sausages.
The competition reached its climax as Mateer and Wong neared the end of their bangers. While Wong appeared to be ahead, Mateer’s remarkable final gulps carried her to a third-place finish, just one second before Wong.
“I’ve been eating sausage for years now, so it was great to be able to apply the skills I’ve acquired to a more practical setting,” says Mateer.
Perhaps Wong sums it up best: “It was a tough competition but at the end of the day sausage was the ultimate winner.”
Ah, isn’t it always. You can see for yourself at this Saturday’s Hot Sausage Eating Competition, in which twelve fierce competitors will undergo not one, but two rounds of intensive sausage-eating for the chance to win our first-place prize: RMB500 in cash, a trophy and some bonus Sherpa’s money. (Second place gets Arrow Factory craft brews, and third place gets a high-five… and probably some fun surprises in the toilet later. Just kidding. Sort of.)
Our team’s final times, below:
First Place, Justin: 2 minutes, 12 seconds
Second Place, Oscar: 2 minutes, 40 seconds
Third Place, Noelle: 3 minutes, 44 seconds
Fourth Place, Dominique: 3 minutes, 45 seconds
See you Saturday.
Arrow Factory Taproom (Liangma River), 1 Xindong Lu (at Liangmahe Nanlu), Chaoyang 朝阳区新东路1号 (亮马河南路)（8532 5335）
For more info on Beijing's First Annual Hot Sausage Eating Competition, click "Read more" below, or visit Arrow Factory Taproom (Liangma River).