The Taco Bell Draft

Years from now we will look upon fall of 2010 as the golden age of MB&B eating challenges.  We do them more frequently now, but it will be hard to top the epic back-to-back combination of the Taco Bell Draft and McDonald's Survivor.

We were inspired by this video of four people drafting items off the menu of Taco Bell.  While they seemed to do a fairly limited set of items, we had ten competitors, so we literally drafted every item (including all the permutations of nacho cheese/meat/chalupa/gordita, etc).  By random selection, I had the first pick and made the obvious choice: cinnamon twists.  Not only smaller than all the other items, but possibly the only item on the menu that tasted different.

The draft continued for all ninety spots.  At the time, Taco Bell only had eighty-six items, so we had four wild cards - if you picked one of those you were assigned an item at random.  Jared was first to choose a wild card and was stuck with some sort of beefy cheesy burrito thing, scaring everyone off.  The last round was a showcase of horribleness - Chicken Ranch Taco salad, Chipotle Steak Taco Salad, Express Taco Salad, and the dreaded Fiesta Taco Salad.  Salads at Taco Bell consist of a fried tostada shell filled with pools of meat and beans barely concealed under a few shreds of lettuce.  Somehow, with the last pick of the draft I was spared all those and was left with the Volcano Nachos, which were higher in calories but delicious.

It's not clear what Dan was doing during the draft (he's the tall red bar); perhaps he couldn't override his natural instinct to maximize calories.  After we divided up and went to three area Taco Bells, we came back to the conference room with our spoils.

We learned all about the meat sweats that night, as well as meatmares, meat shakes, and of course I learned all about meatpeating.  I managed to finish my food before I did though.  Here I am midway, trying to put down one of several chalupas while listening to "All I Do Is Win":

Six of us finished our drafted food: VJ, Dan, Jared, Trexler, Rob, and me.  Observe the blue bars of shame (uneaten food):

We then entered overtime, where each person redrafted an uneaten item.  Only VJ and Dan finished the first round of overtime.  In round two, VJ successfully ate a large burrito, while Dan tried to induce meatpeating in VJ by opening a packet of ranch dressing and drinking it directly.  That strategy was unsuccessful, and Dan became the third person to be eliminated by the Chipotle Ranch Salad, leaving VJ as the victor.  A strong start to his career, but other challenges lay ahead...