Before I begin, here are two things I need to mention:
1) I hate baseball. I hate it. It’s, like, barely a sport to me now and I liked it better when the players were up to their eyeballs in PEDs. However, I do like going to baseball stadiums during games. Baseball stadiums are American treasures and always fun.
2) Man vs. Food landing on Netflix was one of the five best things to ever happen to me. I love that show and food challenge shows in general. I love the idea of food challenges even if I’ve never done one.
So when I saw the insane menu the Atlanta Braves cranked out for the team’s last year in Turner Field I knew I had to try it. All of it. All at one time.
Here’s the play-by-play of how it went down.
7:03 p.m.: I’ve never been to Turner Field, and have decided to go to my first game there to see the 12-33 Braves, who are the worst they’ve looked in my lifetime. They’re playing the Brewers who are also under .500. I bought my tickets on Stubhub for $6. There are a handful of people walking to the stadium. Yet there are people outside of Turner Field scalping tickets. This doesn’t seem like sound business strategy.
7:15 p.m.: I walk up to the Smoke House barbecue spot where they sell two items on my to-eat list: the Sausage Sundae and the Fritos Top-N-Go. The Sausage Sundae is a sausage link split in two with a clump of mashed potatoes, mac n’ cheese and pulled pork in the middle. All of it is doused in barbecue sauce. They also put a tiny tomato on top of the mashed potato. It’s the only vegetable I’ll eat all night.
The Top-N-Go is an entire jumbo bag of Fritos with queso, pulled chicken, barbecue sauce, sour cream and jalapeños.
7:18 p.m.: I already regret this. I’ve taken three bites of mashed potato, a couple of bites of mac n’ cheese — that’s pretty much a clump of Stouffers — and had some of the sausage. Already everything feels heavy. There isn’t a lot of flavor to the Sausage Sundae aside from the well-seasoned sausage itself. It’s just all heavy food and I honestly don’t know how much I can eat. The Sausage Sundae is just too much… stuff. It’s like the worst Thanksgiving meal in one plate. I didn’t get a drink yet, which was a huge tactical error.
7:20 p.m.: I’ve moved on to the Top-N-Go which is actually pretty freaking delicious. It’s a glorified bag of nachos, so it’s the most harmless thing on the menu even if it’s sort of a used condom of cholesterol and salt. The saltiness helped offset the overwhelmingness of the starches in the Sundae. Somehow. Of everything I order tonight, this is the one I could eat the most.
7:30 p.m.: There’s a game going on but I’m still sitting in front of the Smoke House, contemplating life and the fact I have to eat more food. I record a video where I say things like “I regret my decision” and “tell my family I love them.”
7:31 p.m.: The couple next to me abruptly gets up and walks away.
7:34 p.m.: It’s time to order my next crop of bad decisions: The Everything Dog, The Punisher, The Tater Tot Chop and the Burgerizza. But I hit a snag in two areas. They’ve discontinued The Punisher, which was fried rib meat, covered in a barbecue sauce that’s infused with Monster energy drink and nestled between buns and strips of bacon. This was the sandwich I was most nervous about so I’m a bit relieved. I still want to know what happened.
“Why did you guys discontinue it?” I ask the lady behind the counter. “Somebody die or something?”
“What else would you like?”
“…” (I never got a straight answer on if someone died from the Punisher.)
Snag two: The. Burgerizza. Is. Sold. Out. That’s right. In a barely-attended game, there is still enough demand for the Burgerizza — a massive hamburger sandwiched between two pepperoni pizzas — that it’s sold out. This is Trump’s America at work.
They do have The Everything Dog, which is a mutant of a hot dog. It’s a foot long dog with queso, jalapeños, nacho chips and sprinkled with popcorn because YOLO. And, like everything else in this damn stadium, it has barbecue sauce on it.
Then there’s the Tater Tot Chop. It’s a huge tater tot that’s pressed into the shape of a waffle. Then there’s melted cheese, jalapeños and bacon on top. And another tater tot waffle on top of that. I take both back to my table.
7:35 p.m.: I dig into The Everything Dog first. The popcorn makes zero sense and doesn’t add anything to the meal. After the first bite of popcorn I pluck all the kernels out. Then I take a bite. The pretzel bread makes the sandwich tougher than it should be and… wait… there’s a layer of french fries between the wiener and the bread. Why? WHY?!?!? Do you know how much sloppy ass meat you need on a plate to hide a dozen french fries from human eyesight? How is that possible? The popcorn and french fries — which get really soggy really quickly — are unnecessary accoutrements to a hot dog that isn’t horrible otherwise. If they used a thinner bread this would be a winner.
7:38 p.m.: Then there’s the Tater Tot Chop. This is among the five worst things to ever happen to me. The waffle tot has the texture of food that a bird has chewed up and vomited into my mouth. There’s zero flavor to it and I have no desire to dig into the cheese and jalapeño middle. I hate this with all my heart. I’ve only taken two bites of this and it’s pretty much all I’ll eat of it all night. I hate you, Tater Tot Chop.
7:45 p.m.: At this point, I have four of the fattest “dishes” in front of me and people are starting to stare. Some people walk by and ask me what I’m doing and I explain that it’s for a story.
One guy reminds me that I still haven’t ordered the Burgerizza.
I die inside.
7:48 p.m.: Now I’m feeling guilty. I have all this food and people in Turner Field aren’t going to take partially-eaten food from a weirdo snapping food selfies with it. Can I take the food out? Are there homeless people outside? I can’t just throw it away.
7:50 p.m.: I take another handful out of the Fritos condom. It’s the best thing I’ve had.
8 p.m.: I’ve been sitting outside the vendor waiting for them to reload on Burgerizzas. This is one my life’s low points.
8:05 p.m.: I try again ordering a Burgerizza. And things get weird. I don’t really eat pork and everything I’ve had is pork bukkake so I want to take a break. The Burgerizza is a pepperoni pizza on top of a hamburger patty on top of more pizza dough. Between the patty and the pizza is more cheese slices and bacon. Sigh. I don’t want anymore pork.
“Hey, you don’t do just cheese Burgerizzas right?”
“No, just pepperoni and we can’t take it off.”
That’s reasonable, I guess.
“Well can you do it without the bacon?”
“No, the bacon is inside the Burgerizza and it’s cooked together at once so you can’t take it out.”
I’ve never heard of a bacon cheeseburger where you can’t take the bacon out. Which all indicates to me that the Burgerizza is prepared all together and nuked all at once. And for some reason it’s hard to get loose pieces of bacon out. This doesn’t bode well for the monstrosity’s freshness.
8:09 p.m.: I take the first bite.
It’s goddamn delicious. The bread is soft. The pizza sauce and the cheese and the beef make it all taste like one big Meat Lover’s pizza. The first bite is really nirvana. As I get through to the rest of my quarter (it’s four huge slices for $26, so it’s really a pie to share), the excitement dies down a bit. The burger meat isn’t seasoned and it really starts to taste like rubber after a while. I can only handle one quarter before it starts to dry up my soul. But besides the Fritos bag, it’s the best thing they have to offer.
8:20 p.m.: I still have watched zero baseball and I don’t think I will for the night. The Warriors and the Thunder play soon and, well, I don’t think I’ll last much longer being more than 5 feet from some porcelain. A woman walks by and asks what I’m doing. She says she’ll pray for me and tells me the good food is in the upper levels. There’s apparently a buffalo chicken and waffle sandwich of some sort up there. I contemplate going to try it… but my insides hurt. Everything hurts. I regret all of this.
8:33 p.m.: I leave Turner field with 75 percent of a Burgerizza, most of The Everything Dog and the Tater Nightmare. I just can’t throw it away. There are people asking for food on the way to my car. I give it to them. The night isn’t a total loss.
6:15 a.m.: I wake up in the fetal position. Everything still hurts. My soul is crying for freedom. My insides are a greasy mess of cholesterol, barbecue sauce, and sodium.
2 p.m.: It’s my first meal since last night. The idea of moving my mouth to chew hurts my brain. But I persevere. I carry on. For I am a survivor. And I’m not gonna give up.
I burp. I think something came up.