If your new year's resolution is to eat healthy and lose weight, stop right now—just reading this article might add pounds to your waistline. I know I had trouble buttoning my jeans by the time I finished downing the biggest hamburgers three Las Vegas eateries have to offer. But who can resist the idea of stuffing yourself silly on more than an entire pound of beef in one sitting?
My first stop was Fun On a Bun, which opened in November. Fun On a Bun is a sterile, outlet mall-style fast-food joint with bare walls and bright lights, but the food makes up for it. Owners Thomas and Dee Dee Bryant boast that their 1-pound Mega Monster Burger is not only tasty, but healthy, as it is charbroiled in canola oil with no trans-fatty acids. All I know is that this is one yummy burger. It's actually two half-pound patties topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, sautéed onions and more. It was easily the messiest of all the burgers I shoved down my gullet, but the meat was juicy, a little salty and cooked to perfection, and the toppings—which can include chili, bacon and cheese if you're into that kind of thing—were extremely fresh. Fun On a Bun is the only place to go if you're in the mood for a pound of ground cow, but use a fork or risk taking some of it home on your shirt.
Note: A second Fun On a Bun is scheduled to open this summer in the Las Vegas Outlet Center.
Stop No. 2 was the Chuck Wagon, a great 2 a.m. drunken-stopover joint. Its Monster Burger is a single 2.5-pound patty that spreads out about a foot across and reaches more than 6 inches high after the lettuce, onion, tomatoes and enormous bun are piled on. There was absolutely no way I could pick the whole thing up, and even after cutting it into quarters and smashing it down, I couldn't fit my mouth around the sucker. It was either a bite of beef, a bite of bun or a bite of lettuce.
Chuck Wagon Chef and Food and Beverage Manager Larry Kunz created the beefy beast as a joke for Halloween a few years back and has included it as a menu item ever since. It's a hit—4,000 were sold in 2005 alone. It comes with fries, not that I needed more food, but they did a good job of breaking up the monotony of bite after bite of beef.
This monster burger has a lot going for it—taste, fresh ingredients—and its size is astounding and, well, heart-stopping. (If, for some reason, you're still hungry, try a slice of Kunz's award-winning round-up cake. The entire cake weighs 18 pounds, and one slice takes up a whole plate, with multiple layers of moist chocolate cake, caramel, luscious chocolate icing, walnut topping and dollops of whipped cream.)
My final stop was the Laughing Jackalope. The kitchen's hours are wonky but if you can get there while the cook is in the house, the 1.25-pound patty, piled high with thick slices of onion and shredded lettuce, with crispy fries on the side, is pretty decent. The burger wasn't nearly as large as the Chuck Wagon's, was loosely packed so it occasionally fell apart, and the toppings weren't as fresh as the others. But you can also get a Double Trouble Monster Burger—twice the size of its baby brother. Hot damn, that's enough beef to kill a horse.
It's great to know there are a few places to go any time a regular, puny hamburger won't do, and it's great to know that being gluttonous is celebrated, not shunned, around these parts. So put on your fat pants, do some mouth-stretching exercises and get ready for the ultimate heffer-eating experience.
Anyone truly obsessed with hamburger eating can head to the Plaza Hotel on January 21 for the Plaza Casino Big Daddy Burger Eating Contest. Watch totally insane people from all parts of the country dive into the whopping 9-pound Big Daddy Burger. What some people won't do for a free meal ... and the chance to win $12,000 in prize money.