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"Deep Dish" Takes Oyster Belt

By Prescott Carlson in Miscellaneous on Apr 13, 2008 5:10PM

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Photo of Deep Dish and fans by shiny red type

Long time Chicagoist readers know that we're big fans of Chicago's own competitive eater Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti. Perhaps the fact that he can wolf down over 4 pounds of chicken wings or 49 hot dogs and remain so thin is an inspiration for our metabolism. His mohawk and outgoing personality don't hurt, either.

So we're proud to announce that Deep Dish continued his reign of gormandizing terror this weekend by winning the Acme World Oyster Eating championship belt. Bertoletti easily beat second place finisher "Crazy Legs" Conti by consuming 35 dozen oysters in only 8 minutes. Yikes. We once managed to put away two dozen oysters at Hugo's, but a) it wasn't in 8 minutes, and b) there was a large quantity of gin martinis involved. What's more amazing is that his latest accomplishment isn't even Bertoletti's best:

"I could probably do a couple dozen more, especially if they were charbroiled," said Bertoletti, who holds the endurance oyster-eating record, having downed 53 1/2 dozen in 2007 before calling it quits. "Although they're great raw."

[Trib]