A burger, a boy, a dream: A reporter’s journey to down the Stellanator

A burger stacked 14 inches high, held together by cheese, eggs, bacon, peanut butter, some veggies and two buns.

If you can down all 5 pounds and 5,792 calories of the Stellanator (plus fries) in 45 minutes, Stella’s Bar and Grill in Bellevue will hang up your photo and give you a t-shirt. Never one to shy from vanity or free apparel, I spent July 2024 training for the towering menace along with managing editor Ryan Hoffman.

Every week I gave an update through our Omaha newsletter (subscribe here). But a good midwesterner never lets leftovers go to waste. Read all my entries below and revel in the drama that I’m sure will be remembered for epochs to come.

July 11 — A challenger approaches

When we started the Omaha newsletter, the Flatwater staff had many ideas to get people reading. Among the good ones (great writers, slick design, a variety of content) was one of a … simpler ilk.

“What if I ate the Stellanator?” I (Chris Bowling) blurted to my editor one day. He looked at me with a mixture of amusement and pity.

For those unaware, the Stellanator is a food challenge at Stella’s Bar & Grill in Bellevue. In 45 minutes you must scale a meat mountain of six burgers, six fried eggs, six slices of cheese, 12 strips of bacon, some veggies to keep it healthy and peanut butter all stacked between two buns. It clocks in at about 5 pounds, 14 inches tall and approximately 5,792 calories. It also comes with fries.

Of the 744 who’ve tried it, 47 have succeeded. That’s a lower average than the acceptance rate at Harvard Law.

But what, fair reader, does this have to do with local news? I’m not sure, but I’ll make it work.

For the next three weeks I’m going to ask different experts for advice, warnings and wisdom that may be useful to me and Flatwater managing editor Ryan Hoffman when we throw down the gauntlet on July 25. My hope is it’s interesting, funny and adds a few more readers to Flatwater’s Omaha newsletter.

But first, to start my Dantean journey, I hopped in my CR-V and headed south.

I met Stephanie Francois in the lull between weekday lunch and dinner rushes. She was sitting at the end of the bar, wedged between a wall of Stella’s accolades and a tasteful portrait of the Stellanator against a white backdrop. Francois is a descendent of the restaurant’s namesake and, with the help of her parents Gene and Pam, bought the place in 2007 that had long been a second home to her.

The Stellanator’s origin story goes like this. In 2010 someone told a TV personality known for feats of consumption to eat at Stella’s while he was in town. Stephanie quickly concocted a super-sized version of her favorite burger. The guy never came, but others did.

Over the years some tried-and-true techniques have emerged, which the Francois’ were gracious enough to share. Eating exorbitant amounts of lettuce days prior will expand your stomach. Exercising right before helps.

The best strategy for consumption? Buns first. The colder the globs of peanut butter on each piece of bread get, the harder they are to down, Stephanie said.

Pam said some common mistakes include mashing everything into a casserole-like substance. That offers no advantage and, as one would have to imagine, does little favors visually. A good attitude helps. The cocky ones flounder. The quiet ones surprise you, they said. 

Gene offered simple advice: Eat fast. After 30 minutes the success rate plummets.

I also asked what Stella would think of all this. The woman who started this business in 1936 and ran it for decades was a serious matriarch so it’s hard to say what she has in common with the burger bearing her name, the Francois family said. At the same time it’s become an integral part of the restaurant’s story.

July 18 — Stellanator Science

The questions fly at me quickly.

“How old are you?”

“28,” I tell the scientist, surprised that in seconds I’ve lost control of the interview.

“Are you healthy?” 

“I mean, I could probably exercise more,” I respond, wondering how anyone answers that question honestly.

“Can you eat a lot?”

We’ve arrived at the reason I called David Metz, a retired doctor and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who’s researched competitive eating. In just a week I’ll be attempting the Stellanator — a six-patty burger replete with cheese, eggs, bacon and peanut butter. Last week I talked to the owners of Stella’s for tips. This week I want to see what science can offer.

But first, I try to impress Metz. When I was 17, I tell him, I once ate about nine pancakes, two breakfast sandwiches, two orders of bacon, one order of sausage and several hash browns at IHOP. I wasn’t particularly hungry. I just wanted to see if I could do it. While my abilities have waned since then, maybe that fire still burns in me, I tell him.

Metz is not impressed. He asks me if I felt full then.

I was so full I couldn’t think, I admit.

As Metz launches into a detailed, and gross if I’m being honest, description of how the stomach works, my hopes deflate.

Metz and other researchers found people who eat herculean amounts of food have stomachs that stretch to super-human limits before they feel full. Some claim training — drinking lots of water or eating tons of low-calorie food — help stretch the stomach over time. Many just seem born with this ability.

I grew up hearing that corn syrup disables something in your brain that tells your body it’s full, I tell Metz. Is it possible that’s a strategy? Metz, again a medical doctor, could not confirm this fact I vaguely remember hearing on Nickelodeon in the early 2000s. 

Metz couldn’t offer much more insight as competitive eating has not been that well studied. It’s a shame, he said, because the science could assist in developing techniques to help people with digestive issues.

At the same time, Metz cautions me. People have hurt themselves and even died trying to eat or drink more than their body can handle. Feeling vulnerable, I ask Metz how I should deal with failure if I don’t finish. He laughs.

Why people want to push things to those limits baffles Metz. But he also can’t help his curiosity.

He asks the details of the challenge I’m doing. How many people have attempted it? How many people have completed it?

When I tell him the record — that someone swallowed the Stellanator in under four minutes — it’s hard not to hear the mixture of amusement, horror and awe in his voice.

“Oh my God,” he said. “Jesus.”

July 18 — The Master

I wake in a cold sweat. The waxing moon bathes the room in a ghostly sheen as I raise my fingers to my lips. The taste of hamburger, egg and peanut butter still lingers, but I feel relief. The dream is over.

Then anxiety returns. The nightmare has just begun.

Today is the day I know all of you have circled on your calendars. The day I take on the Stellanator. So far I’ve gotten advice from Stella’s owners and a doctor who’s researched competitive eating. But before I can stare down that sky-high sandwich, I have one last person to seek.

Her name came up everywhere. In old news clips. From readers. During conversations at parties. 

Molly

The record holder who Houdini’d the Stellanator in under four minutes. I find her on Instagram and send a long message, apologizing for the random-ness of my question before I fill her in on my quest, desire to hear her story and interest in being her understudy. Hours later I get a response.

“It’s a good burger.”

We’re off to a great start.

Once I get straight to the point we’re soon chatting over the phone.

Molly Schuyler first heard about the Stellanator waiting tables at the Bellevue Applebee’s. A coworker knew how much Diet Coke she could down during a shift and said she should try the burger. After some goading, she went down the road with her young kids in tow and easily dusted the burger. She didn’t think it was a big deal, but it got a lot of attention and it led to a career of bigger and bigger challenges.

Then, and especially today, the Stellanator never posed much trouble to Molly. But I ask her to put herself in my size-9.5 shoes.

Have them cook the meat rare, she said. Chewing and swallowing well-done beef takes longer. Let the burgers cool down too, the hotter they are the more water you have to drink. Speaking of water, it takes up space so drink it sparsely, she said. And don’t drink soda. The carbonation takes up room.

The first step when the burger gets to you though is to separate it into its parts. From there it does help if you try and make it more palatable. Eat some burgers until you get sick of the meat then try something else. If the fries get cold and greasy, add a tomato to mix it up.

The lubrication also helps it go down easier, an important detail in all competitive eating. It’d be great to get the eggs as runny as possible to increase the wetness of the whole affair, she said.

“Free liquid is free liquid,” she said. 

As I get nearer to the Stellanator, I wonder if its aura will affect my life in the way it has Molly’s. 

After the Stellanator she searched for new challenges. Schuyler, who no longer lives in Omaha, has amassed a following, including more than 284,000 YouTube subscribers. But competitive eating is not her full-time job — more of a side hustle. And her ability to consume a lot of food doesn’t seem to define her either.

In truth, she doesn’t understand why people are so fascinated with it to begin with.

July 18 — ‘Why are you doing this?’

The burgers laid in clumps before me. A sludge of peanut butter and egg yolk covered my fingers as the seconds tick by.

If you’ve been following along these past few weeks, you’ll remember I’ve been trying to best the Stellanator: a six-patty cheeseburger held together with bacon, eggs and peanut butter. The experts I interviewed ahead of the challenge last Thursday had a lot of great advice that I tested.

The night before the challenge I set out to eat 4 pounds of cabbage to stretch my stomach. I ate a quarter of one head. Turns out, I’m not a fan of the raw taste and it’s deceptively difficult to chew. Embarrassed, I tried compensating with water. After three cups worth — the jumbo souvenir cups from the zoo to be exact — my stomach felt stretched.

“Why are you doing this again?” my girlfriend asked as she surveyed my incapacitated figure.

“Had I bitten off more than I could chew?” I wondered. “Did hubris taste like a mouthful of raw cabbage?”

The next day the Flatwater crew crowded into Stella’s. I sat at one end of the table and managing editor Ryan Hoffman, who’d also be doing the challenge, sat on the other. Ryan said to prepare he ran a few miles before. I forgot my experts had advised exercising. I did 20 pushups outside to be safe.

Then the burgers arrived. Grease dripped from the crisp bacon, not unlike dew from a leaf in a calm morning.

The timer started and I followed the advice I’d received for attacking the burger. I disassembled it before sandwiching the six eggs between the buns. Greasy peanut butter is messy but much easier to eat. I slowly downed patties, bacon and fries until I was probably 80% through the challenge. I saw light at the end of the tunnel.

Then the full force of the Stellanator settled into my stomach. Ryan and I were both physically unable to continue with about 10 minutes left.

When I thought about the last person I wanted to interview for this series, I considered a grief counselor who could help me deal with this failure. But finishing the burger was never the point (although I am proud of how much I ate). I just did it to entertain people. Plenty were, from my coworkers to the staff at Stella’s to some readers.

I reached out to Jason Fagone, who wrote a book about competitive eating in 2006, to learn more about why challenges like these bring us together.

“It takes a bunch of these deeply American tendencies and kind of mashes them together into this one strange and riveting thing,” he said.

We love spectacle, excess and, of course, food. Local challenges are special, adding characters, cuisine and lore that weave themselves into our communities’ stories.

“People have always gathered around food, and been celebrating food since the beginning of time,” he said. “There’s something deep about that.”