Not all competitive eaters look like competitive eaters. Raina Huang, for example, looks more like a swimsuit model. Which makes sense because that’s exactly what she is when she’s not scarfing down six pounds of shrimp or a 6,000-calorie pizza. Don’t ask us how she does both.
Randy Santel, a burly, bearded bro with a huge YouTube presence, looks like a competitive eater. And he proved that he’s got the stomach for the trade when he took on a 28” pizza challenge at Benny DiCarta’s in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Friday, February 2.
The pizza’s crust alone weighs an estimated 3.4 pounds, not counting the cheese. But Santel downed the whole pie in less than 26 minutes, easily beating the required time of 28 minutes to win the challenge.
Related: How $44 monster-sized pies rack up profits at this pizzeria
The pie features five cheeses and sauce—maybe more, to hear Santel tell it. “Let’s just say I’m leaving full,” he said in a video posted on MLive. “They loaded this thing up with cheese and sauce and a whole bunch of other stuff.” He added that the pie was “delicious.”
“As I look around and see all the half-eaten 28” pizzas that families here have ordered and not even come close to finishing, I’m proud to say that I finished a whole 28” pizza here at Benny DiCarta’s,” Santel said.
Santel’s appearance at Benny DiCarta’s proved that a pizza-eating challenge can draw a large crowd to your pizzeria, especially when a well-known competitive eater gives it a shot. A throng of customers gathered to cheer him on at the restaurant and began chanting, “Ran-dy! Ran-dy! Ran-dy!” once he finished the monster pizza.
Benny’s has locations in Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wyoming. Each Benny’s store operates under a different name reflecting the local market. For example, Kalamazoo was once dubbed the Paper City, and “di carta” means “of paper” in Italian. Hence the Kalamazoo store’s name: Benny DiCarta’s. A location in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, is called Benny Palmetto’s in reference to that state’s famous palmetto trees, while a store in the mountains of Casper, Wyoming, is known as Benny Montanaro’s.
The 28” pizza sells for $40 at Benny DiCarta’s, but non-professional eaters who can eat the whole pie in under 30 minutes can win $280. For professionals like Santel, the cash prize is considerably lower—just $100—but he faced the challenge with plenty of gusto and zero fear.
Santel is the founder and owner of the FoodChallenges.com website, which lists food challenges in every country. According to his personal website, he has won restaurant food challenges in all 50 states plus 40 other countries around the world. His YouTube channel has more than 1.67 million subscribers.
Last month Santel and fellow competitive eater Brandon Clark—known as “Da Garbage Disposal”—teamed up to take on the 36” Godfather pie at Sal’s Family Pizza in Franklin, Tennessee. That’s a New York-style pizza featuring a 5-pound crust and whole-milk mozzarella. Santel and Clark added black olives and diced green peppers “just for fun and some added flavor” and still competed the challenge in 28 minutes and 12 seconds.
