Big Tex Steak House - good food, some entertainment

Ongoing photos from this trip are available online by clicking here.  But this event is worth extra mention.  We left OK City and landed in Amarillo, another one of my targets because it is the home of the Big Tex Steak House, not long ago featured by Bill Geist on a CBS show, perhaps Sunday Morning.  He told of the 72-ounce FREE STEAK - if you eat the whole thing.

Sure enough, we got there in time to see a guy try to do it - but he failed.  First off, take a gander at the restaurant floor as shown in this video -

Yes, it's a big room - and you will see when I pan to the right what looks like a scoreboard clock, with 60:00 shown 6 times - once for each chair at the table set up at the front of the room.  In essence, it is their form of "customer entertainment" for which they pay only the cost of a steak that may or may not be eaten, thus certifying their unique business proposition in the minds of all others who are there eating.  And the food, by the way, is quite good, we found.

Not long after I shot that video this fellow shows up.  He told me he's never done this before but he's been driving by the place for 30 years, back and forth to Iowa, and decided that tonight was his night, and he sat down.

In the picture you can see the salad, potatoes, bun, and enormous steak that he has to eat in order to get it all free.  We're maybe 5 minutes into it here, and his appetite is still strong.  For now.

Yes, we're at the end of things here - salad gone, roll is still sitting there but you can't see it, and the meat left on his plate is more than a single person should eat.  It looked like the same volume that the two of us ate and we had plenty.

Notice also he's inside 10 minutes left on his hour - the clock in the background, which you previously saw had 60:00 posted for six fools to try this.

With about five minutes to go the head chef came over to talk to him, then announced to the whole group that he had failed and we should give him a round of applause, which we did.  Our server told us that she's never seen anybody eat the whole thing - and they normally have at least one person try it every day.  What terrific publicity!