The blueberry-pancake eating contest this morning at Fairway Cafe on Broadway and 74th Street was a carb-fueled orgy, dripping with syrup and self-loathing. Sixteen hungry contestants sat down at the Fairway Cafe on the second floor at 9:30 a.m. and had 10 minutes to shove as many palm-sized pancakes into their mouths. Cafe operator Mitchel London carried the pancakes out on paper plates from the open-air kitchen and put them in front of the contestants, who sat on both sides of a long table.
About half of the contestants appeared to give up about two-thirds of the way through the contest, and some spent too much time soaking up syrup with their pancakes. But you could tell a few people had either participated in competitive eating contests or perhaps watched them on TV. A few were jumping up and down, trying to dislodge the pancakes they had already swallowed from their gullets to make room for more. If there was any regurgitation I did not see it.
In the end, it was Doug Yarema (pictured at left), an Upper East Sider (sigh) who took home the prize, a $100 gift certificate to Fairway. He swallowed 57 pancakes. The cafe also gave a gift certificate to the guy sitting next to Doug, Seth Grudberg, who consumed 50 flapjacks and argued that Doug had not in fact eaten more than him.
“How do you feel?” we asked Doug.
“Full. I don’t want to see pancakes again for another year.”
This may not be the last time Fairway encourages people to shove food into their mouths. An employee says that the cafe will probably hold a pie-eating contest soon.
Photos and video by Avi.
Wouldn’t that be pancake hole?
I am very disappointed in Fairway to do such a stupid thing. Encouraging anybody to eat more than 3 pancakes, let alone 100, does not make any sense. It is harmful, and in light of the current state of the world, with 60 million refugees on the road, many of them hungry, it is downright immoral. I encouraged Fairway some time ago to cancel this event and instead give a generous donation to a food charity. Fairway did not listen. Maybe Fairway will cancel its next harebrained (with apology to hares) project: pie-eating. If Fairway hopes to attract more customers this way, it does not work: I for one am out of their Café until they stop this.