Big Texan Steak Ranch
Texas
A cowboy won five dollars eating four and a half pounds of steak in an hour, and the restaurant has been giving that meal away free ever since.
In 1960, the founder of a new Amarillo steakhouse decided to find out which of the cowboys working the nearby stockyards could eat the most beef in an hour. The prize was five dollars. One man got through four and a half one-pound steaks, plus a shrimp cocktail, a baked potato, a dinner roll and a salad. Bob Lee was impressed enough to make a standing offer. Whoever eats that much again in his restaurant gets it free. That offer still holds. The steak is seventy-two ounces, and the full meal comes with the same sides that cowboy faced. Finish it inside an hour and the meal costs nothing. Fail and it costs seventy-two dollars. You pay up front and sign a waiver, and you eat at a table for six on a raised platform in the middle of the dining room, under wagon-wheel chandeliers. About ten thousand people have finished it. Roughly ninety thousand have tried.
This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
Lee was so impressed with the achievement that he declared, "Whoever eats that much again in my restaurant, he gets it for free."
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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