Steak, chips and an existential crisis: Food challenges take social media by storm

How about a burger bursting with a kilo of meat, half a pig's worth of bacon, and a cascade of 10 cheese slices?

Despite resembling a labrador's week of food rations, the Gerogery Hotel is challenging patrons to devour it all in under an hour.

In the past three weeks, the Gerogery Hotel's Facebook page has become a viral sensation, reaching 2.8 million people thanks to its monstrous eating challenges.

Publican Norm Carl said people have been travelling from far and wide to conquer the 1kg steak, double stacker parmi, quintuple burger, and the ring-stinger challenges.

"I've always liked food challenges and enjoyed doing them myself, so we decided to do them here at the pub about two years ago," Mr Carl said.

"It's always been fairly popular on Facebook, but it has recently exploded because we've been putting up both the before and after photos.

"So people see the food and what the challenge is."

Mr Carl, who holds the record for all the challenges, taking down the 1kg steak in an almost impossible eight minutes, walked The Border Mail through his strategy.

"The trick is to go as fast as you can and trick yourself before you're full," he explained.

"My strategy is salad, chips and then steak. I might leave some chips to the end, but I always finish on steak because steak causes a plug, and you can't push a plug down with salad, but you can push a salad down with steak.

"There's a wall that you hit and everyone hits that wall, including myself, so it is whether or not you push through that wall and when it comes."

Mr Carl said the quintuple burger challenge is where most people find themselves lost in an existential crisis.

"You are eating bacon, cheese and beef for a substantial amount of time, and you eventually enter the Twilight Zone," he said.

"The parmi is also tricky because it has a lot of cheese, and cheese is difficult to eat in bulk amounts.

"But the steak is pretty much a walk in the park."

A Border Mail journalist who visited the Gerogery Hotel to take on the 1kg steak challenge confirmed it was, in fact, not a "walk in the park".

Mr Carl said after seeing hundreds of people attempt the challenges, he still couldn't read whether someone would succeed.

"It's often the scrawny guys who come in and knock it over, and the ones that you think are going to do it, do it in 40 or 50 minutes," he said.

"All the young fellas come in here and say that they're going to wipe the floor and they're going to be first, and then you bring the meal out to them, and their mates all laugh.

"Generally, those are the blokes who don't finish."

The pub's newest challenge, the ring-stinger (spicy) burger, saw one daring individual demolish it in an extraordinary five minutes and 14 seconds.

"I went to check on him after a minute and he said he couldn't even taste the spice," Mr Carl said.

"But I went out again and it looked like his eyes were bleeding."

Mr Carl teased that the next challenge on the menu will be a mixed grill.