An eye-popping, gut-busting new eating challenge at The Shack Pubgrub will surely entice many St. Louis University students as well as masochists far and wide. The “Death Row Challenge” is basically two of the Shack’s signature “Shack-Wiches” atop one another (the standard version is at left) in a foot-high, three-pound monstrosity of meat and fixins’.
“It’s Italian Bread, the meat of your choice, provolone, meat, provolone, hand-cut fries, cole slaw, tomatoes, bread, more meat, provolone, more meat, provolone, more fries, more cole slaw, more tomatoes, and bread,” explained Shack General Manager Joe Tomasi, before taking a much-needed breath.
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The meat can be any combo of pastrami, pulled pork, steak, grilled chicken, blackened chicken, fried chicken, turkey, ham, bacon-and-eggs, or pork belly.
This double-decker offense to polite society was christened the “Death Row Challenge,” after St. Louis Post-Dispatch scribe Evan Benn quipped that being served food on a silver baking tray at the Shack felt like “having his last meal on death row,” said Tomasi.
Whether the meal heralds a heart attack or a deathbed confession, unlike some of these obscene restaurant-challenges, it can be defeated, said Tomasi.
“I think it’s do-able,” he said. “The owners don’t want people to be too scared to try it.”
“And plenty of people are finishing the ‘Triple-Dog Dare’ version of the Shack-Wich,” he added, “which is a Shack-Wich with two fried eggs, double meat, and bacon. A lot of the guys on the rugby and hockey teams guys enjoy that. Heck, with the way some of my bussers around here eat, I know it can be done.”
Those who are victorious over the three-pound fat bomb will win two prizes: a T-shirt that reads “I Got Shacked on Death Row” plus getting their name engraved on a brass-type nameplate, which is affixed to a plaque or the like somewhere in the dining room..Tomasi said that the Death Row Challenge will begin around the third week of this month, as soon as the T-shirts are printed.
He added that the challenge will have to have some sort of time limit, maybe a half-hour, and will also require a monitor to make sure the challenger doesn’t leave his seat for the bathroom or anyplace else where he could try a sneaky “reversal of fortune.”
The double-sandwich is so tall, said Tomasi, that there will be one or more steak knives plunged into it as skewers to initially hold it together.
“We’ll call those the shanks in the death row,” he said.
