Business & Tech

Nearby: East Coast Sandwiches Issues Meatball Sub Challenge

If you can finish the oversized sandwich in under 45 minutes, your meal is free.

If you’re feeling hungry, East Coast Sandwiches has a challenge to put your appetite to the test.

The Italian sandwich shop at 400 Beaver St. will launch the “East Coast Sandwich Meatball Sub Challenge” Sunday, when one daring customer plans to try the special meal that pits a single person against a single sub sandwich.

The catch? This isn’t your typical sub.

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“It’s about three pounds of food,” said Matt Cuomo, owner of East Coast Sandwiches.

In the style of the Travel Channel's Man versus Food, the all-you-can-eat challenge involves gorging on an oversized three-foot-long submarine sandwich filled with 18 homemade meatballs, sauce and topped with mozzarella cheese. 

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Cuomo estimates the bread weighs around 1 ½ pounds and the meatballs around 2 ½ pounds. If you can finish it all within 45 minutes, the $40 sandwich is free.

Participants are given a knife and fork, but once the timer starts, they can dig in any way they’d like. Finish in time? Your picture goes on the restaurant's Wall of Fame. You also win serious bragging rights.

“We’ve wanted to do this for awhile,” Cuomo said. “We finally got pictures taken of the actual sandwich and what it’s going to look like.”

Cuomo invites people to come Sunday and watch one customer take the challenge. When he mentioned the challenge to one of his regulars, he said the man immediately wanted to try. He’ll be the first.

“We obviously want the challenge to be difficult, but we don’t want it to be difficult to the point that nobody does it. If he eats it in 25 minutes, we’ll have to change things. If he eats half, we’ll have to see how it goes,” Cuomo said.

There are rules to participate. For one, the shop needs to have at least one day advance notice from would-be eaters because the bread is specially ordered from Breadworks in Pittsburgh.

Anyone taking the challenge is welcome to bring support, but no help with eating is allowed. In fact, you can’t leave the table—unless you plan to give up. 

“Typically in these competitions, once you sit there, you’re there,” Cuomo said.

Tell Us: Do you think you could finish the East Coast Sandwiches Meatball Sub Challenge? Let us know in the comments section below.

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