Friday, May 13, 2011

Heart Attack Grill

The Heart Attack Grill is a fast food hamburger restaurant in the Chandler, Arizona, US. It has courted controversy by serving high-calorie menu items with deliberately provocative names. The establishment is a hospital theme restaurant: waitresses (nurses) take orders (prescriptions) from the customers (patients). A tag is wrapped on the patient's wrist showing which foods they order and a "doctor" examines the "patients" with a stethoscope.

The menu includes "Single", "Double", "Triple", and "Quadruple Bypass" hamburgers, ranging from 0.5 to 2 lb (0.23 to 0.91 kg) of beef (up to about 8,000 Calories), all-you-can-eat "Flatliner Fries" (cooked in pure lard), beer and tequila, and soft drinks such as Jolt cola and Mexican-bottled Coca-Cola made with real sugar. Customers over 350 lb (160 kg) in weight eat for free if they weigh in with a doctor or nurse before each burger. Beverages and to-go orders are excluded and sharing food is also not allowed for the free food deal.

The Heart Attack Grill was founded in 2005 by "Dr." Jon Basso with the declared intent of serving "nutritional pornography", food "so bad for you it's shocking". The idea came when writing a marketing thesis about fitness training studios, as he became inspired by stories about his clients cheating on their diets.

One of the restaurant's gimmicks is an unusual reward for customers who finish a Triple or Quadruple Bypass Burger, wherein they are placed on a wheelchair and wheeled out to their vehicle by their "personal nurse".

The restaurant was featured on an episode of Extreme Pig-outs.

The restaurant's previous spokesman, 575-pound Blair River, died on March 1, 2011 at the age of 29 due to complications from pneumonia.

Heart Attack Grill has deliberately courted controversy as a marketing strategy. The restaurant has been criticized and drawn official complaints for its portrayal of nurses.

The Quadruple Bypass Burger with 8,000 Calories (33,000 kJ) has been identified as one of the "world's worst junk foods". It consists of 4 half-pound beef patties, eight slices of American cheese, a whole tomato and half an onion served in a bun coated with lard.

No comments:

Post a Comment