The Heart Attack Grill is an American hamburger restaurant in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada (formerly located in Tempe, Arizona). It makes a point of serving as unhealthy food as possible, i.e. food which would cause a heart attack (in which case the meal is free).
The establishment is a hospital theme restaurant: waitresses ("nurses") take orders ("prescriptions") from the customers ("patients"). Each patient dons a hospital gown and wrist band before ordering and those who do not finish their meal receive a paddling by one of the "nurses" with the option to buy the tainted paddle afterwards. The menu includes "Single", "Double", "Triple", "Quadruple", all the way up to "Octuple" "Bypass" hamburgers, ranging from 8 to 32 ounces (230 to 910 g) of beef (up to about 8,000 calories (33,000 kJ)), all-you-can-eat "Flatliner Fries" (cooked in pure lard), beer and tequila, and soft drinks such as Jolt and Mexican-bottled Coca-Cola made with cane sugar. Customers over 350 lb (160 kg) in weight eat for free if they weigh in with nurse waitress before eating. Beverages and to-go orders are excluded and sharing food is also not allowed for the free food deal.
Video Heart Attack Grill
History
The Heart Attack Grill was founded in 2005 in Tempe, Arizona, by Jon Basso, with the declared intent of serving "nutritional pornography", food "so bad for you it's shocking". The idea came when writing a marketing thesis about fitness training studios, as he became inspired by stories about his clients cheating on their diets. A second Heart Attack Grill opened in Dallas, Texas in May 2011, but closed in October 2011.
One of the restaurant's promotions is a reward for customers who finish a Triple or Quadruple Bypass Burger, after which they are placed on a wheelchair and wheeled out to their vehicle by their "personal nurse".
Deaths
The restaurant's spokesman, 575-pound (261 kg) Blair River, died on March 1, 2011, aged 29, from complications of pneumonia. The Arizona location closed shortly thereafter, on May 31, 2011.
The Dallas location suffered a similar fate within a few months after that. According to a blog entry in the Dallas Morning News, as of October 12, 2011, the locks at the West End location were changed due to nonpayment of rent. Additionally, food critic Scott Reitz of the Dallas Observer reported being unable to reach the manager by phone and that the restaurant's official website had been "scrubbed of any Dallas location information".
On February 11, 2012, a customer suffered what was reported to be an apparent heart attack while eating a "Triple Bypass Burger" at the grill. Restaurant owner Jon Basso called 9-1-1 and the customer was taken to the hospital. Reportedly patrons thought it was a stunt and started taking photos. Basso later said, "I actually felt horrible for the gentleman because the tourists were taking photos of him as if it were some type of stunt. Even with our own morbid sense of humor, we would never pull a stunt like that."
In February 2013, an unofficial spokesman and daily patron, 52-year-old John Alleman, died of an apparent heart attack while waiting at a bus stop in front of the Las Vegas restaurant. Other similar incidents include on April 21, 2012, when a woman fell unconscious while eating a Double Bypass Burger, drinking alcohol and smoking.
Maps Heart Attack Grill
Menu
The most remarkable thing on the menu is its vegan suggestion: cigarettes.
All soft drinks served contain sugar.
The menu is deliberately tacky. All that is offered is the worst fast food: burgers, fries, and onion rings, "fried in lard" as the menu specifies. The burgers are smothered in bacon and cheese, additions which make them tastier, fattier, and even less healthy.
Reception
Heart Attack Grill has deliberately courted controversy as a marketing strategy. The restaurant has been criticized and drawn complaints for its breastaurant style portrayal of nurses.
The Quadruple Bypass Burger with 9,982 calories (41,760 kJ) has been identified as one of the "world's worst junk foods". It consists of four half-pound beef patties, twenty strips of bacon, eight slices of American cheese, a whole tomato and half an onion served in a bun coated with lard.
The restaurant was featured on an episode of Extreme Pig-outs on the Travel Channel, All You Can Eat on The History Channel, World's Weirdest Restaurants on Food Network Canada, ABC News, on a CBS report with Bill Geist, on Khawatir 10 on MBC, on 7 Deadly Sins on Showtime, on the pilot episode on Fluffy Breaks Even and The Kyle Files.
See also
- Food porn
- Heart attack
- List of restaurants in the Las Vegas Valley
- List of hamburger restaurants
- Obesity in the United States
References
External links
- Official website
- Nightline from ABC News Story
Source of article : Wikipedia
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