Randy Santel is eating the American Dream
You might suppose that consuming a big meal — a <em>big </em>meal, measured in pounds, not ounces — requires only a hearty appetite. And an elastic waistband.</p><p> That kind of thinking is not what got competitive eater Randy Santel’s face onto the walls of restaurants around town and across the Midwest.</p><p> Take a recent Thursday evening. Location: Thai Place in Westport, home of a “food challenge” not about quantity but … stupidity? Endurance? Anyway, the Super Thai Hot Challenge is not for the faint of tongue. </p><p> Santel, 25, hasn’t shown yet, which gives the restaurant’s staff a chance to trot out a platter of 53 hot peppers: habaneros, jalapenos, serranos and more. All this firepower will go into the Demon Gapow meat-and-rice dish Santel will attempt to ingest before his face blows off. </p><p> The 6-foot-5, 235-pound Overland Park resident, looking like the college jock he used to be, finally arrives, grumbling about parking. He travels heavy: duffel bag, camcorder tripod, his own low “aerodynamic” stool. (The stool puts his belly in the best position for eating. “I made it one day when I was depressed and single and had nothing to do.”)</p><p> At the bar he starts setting up like a regular at bingo night: Hand towel (girls are not impressed with guys with food dripping down them). Oversized utensils (fork, spoon, slotted spoon). Three small bottles of milk (two white, one chocolate).</p><p> A good-luck charm, a big nail he won in a Boy Scout contest, goes in his left sock. He sets out a purple Hannah Montana MP3 player (“Jesus told me to get it,” he jokes). He leaves a sleeve of blue-green laxative tablets in a plastic container.</p><p> He is almost ready. He tells the manager they can start cooking.</p><p> A few minutes later the steaming dish, topped with two fried eggs, is in front of him, a vomit bucket on the floor beside him. The restaurant put that there because more than half the 100 people who’ve tried this challenge have needed it.</p><p> “It’s like pepper spray in the kitchen right now,” owner Ted Liberda reports. The cook had to wear a mask.</p><p> Meanwhile, Santel needs more time. With his two big spoons he jabs into the mound of food from each side, trying to cool it down. He lowers his nose to his plate. He’ll repeat these maneuvers several times. </p><p> Finally he peels off his T-shirt to reveal his food challenge costume: a red sleeveless T that shows off his impressive biceps and proclaims “These Aren’t Guns, They’re Cannons.”</p><p> He looks into his video camera. “HI, EVERYONE, THIS IS RANDY SANTEL,” he announces in a big voice — and now everyone is looking over to see what’s going on. He videotapes each food challenge and posts it on YouTube.</p><p> He flips his ball cap around, crosses his heart, rubs his hands together and …</p><p> Starts eating. Big spoonful, big spoonful and a chug of white milk. He shovels it in, all the while nodding his head. Headphones on, listening to tunes. </p><p> The “Happy Birthday” song breaks out nearby, but Santel is oblivious. Shovel, shovel, chug.</p><p> And with an official time of 5 minutes 13 seconds, Santel completes the challenge to applause. He hoists his guns — sorry, cannons — into the air. Apart from sweat dotting his forehead, Santel doesn’t look fazed. Then again, he’s not new at this. Days before he downed 18 jalapenos in two minutes to win a challenge (and $500) in Topeka.</p><p> Afterward he mixes Pepto-Bismol with a little chocolate milk and chugs that.</p><p> He hasn’t beaten the Thai Place record of 2:32, but he’s way out front of the 30-minute time limit.</p><p>How’s his stomach feeling? someone asks.</p><p> “Cryin’,” the big guy says, and cracks a smile.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Bigger pants</span></strong></p><p> Talk to people who have seen Santel in action — he has 64 food challenge wins to his name, only four losses — and you’ll hear how seriously he takes his competitive eating. Even if competitive eating doesn’t seem like something that should be taken too seriously.</p><p> “He’s a professional at what he does, no doubt,” says Jeff Knold, owner of H&H Grill, Stage and Saloon near Worlds of Fun. </p><p> Santel trains for these challenges, Knold points out. He approaches them with a strategy.</p><p> So far Santel has been the only person to finish H&H’s “Hawg” burger, a 5-pounder basically equal to 20 Quarter Pounders minus some of the bread, plus french fries and onion rings. </p><p> “We’ve had like 12 guys try to finish this burger, and he’s the first,” Knold says.</p><p> At Maggie’s Authentic Mexican Foods in Lee’s Summit, owner Ryan Schnabel remembers watching Santel get ready for the challenge of eating 10 big deep-fried tacos in 15 minutes.</p><p> Santel had a “pregame warm-up kinda thing” going on, Schnabel says. He drank a bunch of water. He “jumped around quite a bit.” </p><p> But Santel did not eat 10 tacos. He ate more.</p><p> “He asked me if there was a limit, if he could eat as many as he wanted,” Schnabel says. “He picked the number 16, and that’s what he did.” No one had done that before.</p><p> Name a food and Santel has probably eaten a lot of it in a hurry.</p><p> Pizza? That was his first challenge, in March 2010 in St. Louis. He and a buddy put away a 28-inch pie in 48 minutes to win $500.</p><p> Doughnuts? This month Santel took part in the Tour de Donut in Staunton, Ill., a 32-mile bike race combined with, yes, doughnut-eating (eat a doughnut, shave 5 minutes off your finish time). Santel inhaled 40 “heavy, doughy and extra-glazed” doughnuts, beating the record of 33. The time savings helped him place fourth out of 1,600. </p><p> “Pig wings”? Whatever those are, Santel consumed 5 pounds of them plus 3 pounds of fried corn nuggets in an Omaha challenge. That 8 pounds of food is the most he has eaten in one sitting.</p><p> He has completed most of the challenges Kansas City eateries have to offer. But any time he goes elsewhere, he sniffs out challenges there, too.</p><p> In May, for instance, he attended a wedding in Indiana and managed to work in seven challenges during the trip. The first was a 20,000-calorie “sandwich” of fried foods the size of a football. Covered in mayo. Another was a 22-inch hot dog loaded with toppings. </p><p> All told, 32 pounds of food in four days. He usually wears size 34 pants, but he had to buy a 36 to wear to the wedding. And yes, he ate and drank there, too.</p><p>“There’s not a cake challenge!” a woman at the reception told him.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">No beer belly</span></strong></p><p> When it comes to competitive eating, Santel is so serious, or possibly so crazy, that he recently quit his job to spend more time eating.</p><p>He grew up in St. Peters, Mo., a St. Louis suburb. He was a fat kid. His mom, Karen Santel, says she and Randy did Weight Watchers when he was in fifth grade. He slimmed down, but once he got into high school he put on weight to play football.</p><p>He weighed 346 at one point.</p><p>He also played football at Missouri State University in Springfield and got a degree in construction management. He moved to the Kansas City area and has been working as a concrete estimator in Olathe.</p><p> In early 2010, he entered a body transformation contest, dropped some weight, put on a lot of muscle … and won, scoring a trip to New Zealand and a half-naked cameo as a gladiator on one of the “Spartacus” cable shows.</p><p> That first pizza-eating challenge in St. Louis was a celebratory thing after he’d finished the Spartacus challenge but before he found out he’d won. </p><p> Last fall he started getting into competitive eating in a big way. He quickly discovered he was good at it.</p><p> “He’s been eating a lot since he was little,” his mom says. When he was in high school she’d put dinner on the table and he’d ask, “Is that my appetizer?”</p><p> Matt Fatino, a college buddy, witnessed Santel’s Thai Place victory. “He has to win at everything,” Fatino says. “And he can eat. So put the two together … ”</p><p> The funny thing is, Santel talks a lot about health and fitness. Sure, he eats a ton of food every weekend or so, but to make up for it he eats sensibly during the week — lean meats, protein shakes, vegetables, fiber. And works out every day (weights and cardio), some days twice a day. </p><p> His health, including his cholesterol, is fine, he says.</p><p> And if you get a look at his abs — well, there’s no burger/doughnut/beer belly on this dude.</p><p>The training everyone mentions involves tricks to stretch the stomach. Santel eats an entire watermelon and drinks half a gallon of water in the 20 hours before a challenge.</p><p>Still, you wonder how healthy this kind of activity is.</p><p> “He’s in super-great shape, and then he just eats this crap,” says friend Jason Andrews of Olathe. “His hands are full of grease when he’s doing the challenges.”</p><p>Allan Cooke, a gastroenterologist at University of Kansas Hospital, says there’s always the risk of obesity for someone who consumes so many calories, but Santel’s down-time regimen seems to be countering that.</p><p>And theoretically, a competitive eater could rupture his stomach.</p><p>“These guys (like Santel) consume a hell of a lot of food,” Cooke says. But “apart from obesity, there’s not shown to be any long-term risks to this at all.”</p><p> There does seem to be something a little ironic here, though. Fat kid loses weight, gets ripped, then acquires hobby of stuffing his face. What about that, Randy?</p><p> “I’ve got a unique story,” Santel quips.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">National TV?</span></strong></p><p> So yes, he quit his job. His last day will be Tuesday.</p><p> But big things are afoot for Randy Santel, or at least he hopes they are. “Man v. Food,” the Travel Channel series about a guy who consumes piles of food, inspired a lot of restaurants to start food challenges. It also inspired Santel. </p><p> Having won one national contest (Spartacus), he’s intent on winning another one. “Man v. Food Nation” (as the show is now known) put out a casting call. It’s looking for a restaurant food challenge and a challenger. Adam Richman, the show’s eater, will act as coach.</p><p>Contestants had to submit videos by mid-July, so now Santel is just waiting. Only five finalists will be named; voting via Facebook in August will determine the winner.</p><p> Santel, who picked Westport Flea Market’s Super Flea burger challenge, is “99.9 percent sure” he will be one of the five. </p><p> Flea Market owner Joe Zwillenberg thinks Santel has a good shot, and if he’s successful, Zwillenberg predicts it will be a big deal for Kansas City.</p><p> Assuming he really does become a finalist, Santel probably will need time to campaign for the “Man v. Food” crown.</p><p>But should he have quit his job?</p><p>“He’s young and he’s not married and he doesn’t have any big commitments,” his mother says. “I think that’s just what he wants to do right now.”</p><p> Ultimately, Santel wants to win a lot more food challenges (but not the Coney Island hot dog contest, which requires membership in a pro eaters federation that limits member participation). He wants to be paid to make eating appearances. He wants endorsement deals. </p><p> He wants to start a website that focuses on fitness and, of course, food challenges.</p><p> He wants to open two restaurants, one here and one in St. Louis. The décor would be all the T-shirts (45 so far) and trophies he has won.</p><p> “Making a living eating and working out is the American Dream,” Santel says. His American Dream apparently includes plenty of Pepto.</p><p><strong><span class="infobox-head">HOT DOGS </span></strong></p><p>•Randy Santel will take part in a hot dog-eating contest at 1 p.m. Saturday at Up Dog, 106 W. Maple Ave. on the Independence Square. The record from last year: 20 wieners in 10 minutes. Santel will shoot for 25.</p><p>•More on Santel’s eating challenges at <a href="http://www.facebook.com/atlaszeuspromos">www.facebook.
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