Two customers’ collapses last year didn’t seem to faze fans of Las Vegas’ Heart Attack Grill.
Now there’s word from the Las Vegas Sun that John Alleman, an unpaid and unofficial spokesman for the restaurant who stood outside its doors every day to greet customers, has died after suffering a heart attack last week.
Alleman, 52, was at a bus stop outside the restaurant when he was stricken.
Grill owner Jon Basso tells the Sun that Alleman’s death isn’t going to mean the demise of “Flatliner Fries” or what the restaurant says is the world’s “most calorific burger.” We’re talking 10,000 calories.
“The grill is where you can be yourself. We accept people as they are,” Basso says in the Sun’s report. “(Alleman’s death) isn’t going to stop us from what we’re doing. People have got to live their lives.”
On its Facebook page, the restaurant writes that “John was such a part of the HAG family. It’s hard to look at our menu today without getting teary eyed.”
Alleman, by the way, reportedly weighed about 180 pounds. An earlier unofficial spokesman for the restaurant, Blair “Gentle Giant” River, died in March 2011 of pneumonia. He weighed about 575 pounds.
On Day 1 you eat pizza. Day 2, steak. Day 3, burritos. What do you eat for Day 4?
I don’t think there are many people who think Hamburgers are the perfect food, fit for every lunch and dinner. They probably like your favorite foods too.
I think that once something gets popular enough, it gets fetishized by some percentage of the population and turned gourmet, culinary, or just embiggened. Look at the popularity of coffee and the million ways to serve that now. With more than half of the population doing service work, there’s room for off-the-wall stuff in our society. Hell it even seems normal now. What jobs are we going to do when robots take over? Shit like this.
Wow, that got rambly fast. I apologize in advance for missing the point. :)
Man I disagree. Well, not entirely, but I think a good cheeseburger is as good as gets comfort food wise. Now, if someone else is footing the bill, make no mistake we are going to the best steak place within an hour’s drive. But a cheeseburger, for me, especially at its price point, is hard to top.
Hamburgers are in my meal rotation because they’re dead easy to make. 10 minutes from start to finish, which is unusually fast for what I cook, and with enough condiments they’re pretty tasty. Not pizza level, but pizza is a two hour process, at least in part because of the rise time of the dough, but the baking and ingredient chopping is time consuming as well.
