Man chows down, breaks burger joint’s record

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – James Rocker walked into Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger on June 6 intent on making history. He ordered “a Quint and 35” – a 40-patty burger.

It almost didn’t happen.

Paul Hoppin, night manager of Ann Arbor’s most renowned hamburger joint, sized up the 5-foot-8, 180-pound Rocker and said no way. He interjected something about the last guy who tried to eat that many being hauled away, near death, in a wheelbarrow.

But he offered to let Rocker start with a 10-patty burger – and that was all the 23-year old University of Michigan graduate needed. Rocker put down four 10-patty burgers – that’s four pounds of beef – in three hours to break a restaurant record that had stood for nine years.

“The first one just flew by,” Rocker said. “It was like not even an effort. The second one was pretty much the same. By the third one, things got kind of blurry. After that I became really cautious, really aware that my bite rate was slowing down. My mouth was drying up, and the cold meat didn’t help. The last one took 30 to 45 minutes, but the last few bites went really quickly.”

Rocker says, a little surprised himself, that he suffered no ill effects from his beef binge – though he is taking a break from eating meat just to even out the cosmic balance between him and the cows.

Roderic Collins, the previous record-holder, actually set the record twice. Not long after he ate 32 patties in May 1996, owner Rich Magner says an unidentified “skinny high school kid from Huron” came in and ate 33.

Collins returned to defend his record and tried, unsuccessfully, to eat 40 patties. When they weighed the beef left on his plate, they determined he’d eaten 3.75 pounds – the equivalent of 37 patties.

Rocker says he’d been eyeing Collins’ record – or rather, his pictures on the wall at Blimpy Burger – since he came to the University of Michigan as a freshman five years ago.

Hoppin, who also grilled Collins’ record-setting burgers, gave Rocker’s feat his seal of approval, despite some discrepancies in toppings. Rocker had cheese on just one burger and only ketchup on the rest; Collins went grilled onions and cheese all the way.

“Even when you when you factor that stuff in, he topped Roderic by maybe a gram or so,” Hoppin said. “It was close, but he did it.”