One of social media's most popular "professional eaters" swung by a Welsh burger bar - and absolutely devoured the monster eating challenge staff gave him! Randy Santel, who has more than 1.1m followers on TikTok and over 1.5m subscribers on YouTube, hails from Missouri in the US but has fans all around the world who delight in watching him travel far and wide taking on huge food challenges at a wide range of cafes, restaurants and bars.
Randy, who is also the founder and owner of FoodChallenges.com, was in the UK last year and, being huge fans of his, the owners of Burger Boyz in Port Talbot contacted him to invite him to their restaurant in Commercial Road and challenged him to take on three quadruple burgers and huge portions of fries and halloumi fries - known as The Norris Challenge.
Randy has since shared a video of his visit to the restaurant - and it's been viewed more than 640,000 times on TikTok in just a week and more than 465,000 times on YouTube in just a month. You can get more Port Talbot news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
Read more: The Kebab shop that has just been named the best in Wales for the third time
The owners of Burger Boyz, Marcin Sadlos and Jack Phillips, said Randy's visit had a great impact on the business - both with customers having travelled from as far as Portsmouth to Port Talbot to watch Randy take on the eating challenge, and encouraging local people to stop by their eatery and try their mouth-watering burgers. For more stories about Port Talbot, go here.
On Randy Santel's website, he said he was on a mission "to keep the sport of competitive eating relevant " by travelling the world and tackling existing food challenges and starting new ones for others to try, whilst supporting "mom and pop" small businesses and corporate restaurants by "showcasing their menus and challenges across the globe".
In his TikTok video at Burger Boyz, Randy says it's the first time he's visited the restaurant and shows the huge eating challenge he's taking on: the triple quadruple cheeseburger and loaded chicken fries challenge. He explains that the challenge involves three quadruple cheese burgers (a 'Chuck' burger, an 'Angry Chuck' burger and a 'Baconator') as well as 1kg of fries and 500g of pulled chicken - which he has to finish in one hour.
Remarkably, Randy is filmed devouring every last bite of the huge dinner - and says he finished the challenge in just 33 minutes and 40 seconds. You can see Randy's TikTok video below - and a longer video of his visit to Burger Boyz can be viewed on his YouTube channel.
Explaining how Randy's visit came about, co-owner of Burger Boyz, Marcin, said: "I had seen Randy's post that he was touring the UK, and he mentioned he was visiting Wales. Being a follower of Randy, Katina [his partner and fellow competitive eater] and other competitive eaters for years, I knew how awesome of a moment it would be having any of them visit us! It's the whole reason we decided to do the challenges at our restaurant."
"Following on from this I decided to message Randy and to my surprise he replied and showed interest and we basically created this monster challenge for him," he added. "The post of our challenge blew up on social media and got some other food competitors interested.
"Around four weeks before Randy and Katina were due to come, we had a surprise visit from Canadian competitive eater Joel Hansen – who was also touring the UK at this point - and the one and only UK's number one female [professional eater] Leah Shutkever - she also holds 27 Guinness World Records.
"They came together to do a challenge each, and both hold the male and female records for ‘The Norris Challenge’. Joel then decided to take on our other challenge called ‘The Beast’ which is a monster 8 patty (1kg beef) with 24 slices of cheese burger. So he basically ate 4.5kg of food in one hour and he did this with ease, which I still can't seem to get my head around!"
Discussing the day Burger Boyz hosted Randy and his partner Katina, Marcin explained he chose a day the restaurant would otherwise be closed, and said people travelled from as far away as Portsmouth to watch the pair take on the challenge.
"Our shop was absolutely heaving with spectators, there were even people outside watching through the windows!," he said. "To have Leah, Joel, Randy and Katina come to our little shop to take on the same challenge has been an amazing achievement for our business, all in the first six weeks of us opening!
"People still come into the shop and talk about it and ask about it daily, as we have a ‘wall of fame’ display of the record holders on our walls along with a challenge leader board."
"Randy is a giant of a bloke - I don't think he'd mind me saying this as he calls himself Atlas!" added BurgerBoyz co-owner Jack. "This has had a massively positive impact on our business and people still talk about it to this day, as we have the leader board and wall of fame in our shop. All in all it's pretty cool!"
What's next for Burger Boyz?
Jack and Marcin have said they would like to see another competitive eater, beardmeatsfood, visit their burger restaurant - and would challenge him to take on The Norris Challenge. Marcin said he'd like to see whether beardmeatsfood, real name Adam Moran, would beat the previous professional eaters' times and whether he'd end up on Burger Boyz' Wall of Fame.
In the meantime, Marcin and Jack are now offering "hot wing challenges" at Burger Boyz. Plus, on Tuesday, April 11, they'll be hosting their first competitive eating event, where four people will compete against each other to see who is "the biggest pig!"
You can find Burger Boyz in Commercial Road, Port Talbot - and they also have a stall at Newport Market from Wednesdays to Sundays. You can follow BurgerBoyz on Facebook here.
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