Competitive eating icon Chestnut excited to return to Toronto for WPEC

Joey Chestnut, the king of the Major League Eating circuit, makes his return to Toronto this weekend for the Smoke's Poutinerie World Poutine Eating Championship at Sankofa Square.

Sankofa Square (formerly Yonge-Dundas Square) will explode into 12 straight hours (11 AM - 11 PM) of over-the-top food battles, mind-blowing music, and jaw-dropping performances.

The event is Smoke’s Poutinerie’s way of saying thank you to fans in the most epic way they know how, while raising funds to support We Care, sending kids with disabilities to summer camp.

Back again this year is The Ryan Smolkin Memorial CEO Challenge, a spirited two-minute Poutine Eating Competition where executives from corporate Canada compete to raise funds to send children with disabilities to fully accessible, barrier-free summer camps. Almost $1 million has been raised for We Care to date.

A five-time champion at the event and holder of 56 records in Major League Eating, Chestnut will attend this year's competition after missing out on the 2024 edition of the WPEC.

In an interview with TSN on Friday, Chestnut discussed his expectations for the WPEC, the preparation work that goes into these competitions, and some stories from his almost-20-year career on the competitive eating circuit.

"Excited ... nervous, more than anything," Chestnut said of his return to Toronto on Saturday. The 41-year-old set the world record by eating 28 pounds of poutine at the competition in 2019.

"I've been watching videos. The hardest thing for any contest is just finding the rhythm,” he said. “And since I missed last year, I did some practice this year. So, I'm hoping I can find a rhythm – take the right-sized scoops, breathe, swallow, and hopefully I can find the rhythm quick."

The preparation for Chestnut has also involved attempting to simulate the contest.

"I use Five Guys fries," Chestnut said. "They're pretty similar as a special order – no salt, and I try to get them to cook a little bit different. Then I make the gravy – chicken gravy – and we don't have cheese curds, they're not easily available, so I have to use just mozzarella cheese, which is a little bit different.

“I get the proportions right, half-pound portions, and so I just, yeah, I make it myself – actually, my fiancée helps me, and she does all the cooking and the proportions – and really do a full-on practice. And so, I feel good. I feel pretty good."

Last year's champion, Joel Hansen, took home the title by eating 20.5 pounds of poutine. That's the number Chestnut attacks in practice.

"Yeah, I did 20 pounds. So, yeah, it's... I want to eat whatever the winner did last year,” he said. “I think last year the winner ate 20 pounds, so I was like, all right, I need to make sure I can beat that guy."

With multiple practice sessions leading up to each competition, then the competition itself, Chestnut has maintained a healthy figure for someone making a living by eating food in such large portions. Half of the work of competing in these contests is keeping his body and diet in good form - to varying degrees of success.

"Oh my gosh, I'm not really in shape," Chestnut said with a laugh. "I've been doing this 20 years. I'm a little bit chubby now. But after every contest, there's a recovery period. So afterwards, it's high-fibre diet, trying to get back and get things moving. And if I have pretty much any carbs afterwards, that's when the weight really stays on. But if I eat clean after practice, I can be back to normal in three days after a contest – sometimes a little bit longer, especially if I go out, [or have] any celebration.

“But there's always a recovery period. Beforehand, there's a cleanse period. So today, I had to eat a little bit of poutine earlier today for an interview, but the rest of the day, I should be on a liquid diet. I should make sure I'm absolutely empty and loose for tomorrow. So my whole week kind of revolves around either my practice or the contests."

Chestnut's list of accomplishments and world records is long, with a wide variety of foods consumed at a record pace - waffles, pepperoni rolls, cherry pie, jalapeno poppers, and shrimp cocktails – on the list.

Chestnut says the taste of the food is a key factor in his performance at any given competition. Thankfully, Saturday's poutine is among his favourite items.

"I love it. It's easy. It's like, you eat the poutine, and it's just like, oh yeah, it belongs in you," Chestnut said. "The gravy, potatoes, cheese, it's really like, it's perfect. You can tell if I really like something if I don't have to drink any water or anything during the contest. But this is soft, it's easy to swallow, and the taste is great.

“I compare eating to driving a race car. If you're on a bad road, all those little bumps, they hit you a lot. They're a lot harder. And so, if there was a bad flavour while I'm eating it fast, it irritates me more. And so I'm lucky that it's that there's like no, there's no bad flavour."

Amongst his personal favourite foods are poutine, smoked bologna, and ribs – to go with hot dogs, of course. Chestnut's most prestigious event is the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest held annually on the Fourth of July in New York. But even amongst some of his world-record performances were foods he would not like to relive.

"There are two sides to [the food] coin. I love ribs, but one time I did a contest and they did a terrible job with the ribs. It smelled like cigarette ashes, the way they smoked them. The meat was like, dried. It was like, it was torture trying to [eat], it really sucks eating a food you like and they just did a really bad job," Chestnut said.

"That's work. And usually, I don't feel like I'm working. So that time sucked. But another one - I did cow brain tacos. Honestly, they didn't taste that bad. They had a little bit of a metallic taste, but they looked like brains. They looked really, really gross."

As it turned out, that specific event – the Zombie Pub Crawl in October of 2013 – became more about surviving the food than enjoying it.

"They actually sent me a recipe and they were supposed to be, like, diced up like really fine and cooked in a pan, but they really didn't ... you could still see the brain in every  taco and yeah, so you could see brain and there were guys getting sick on stage," Chestnut said. "…Oh, it was rough. I mean ... the MC was there, and somebody threw up on him. It was gnarly."

Eating a food like that competitively may have been hard for the California native to imagine when he first competed at the age of 21 while attending college. He said he wasn't even the one to sign up, that his friends signed him up for the competition and he attended just for the perks.

"I didn't even want to do it," Chestnut said. "I was in college, and I got signed up to my first one. It was a lobster-eating contest. And I only really went because I got offered a hotel room. It was at a casino and I was 21, so I was like, 'Alright I'll do it.’

“Pretty much the first contest I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this.’ My whole life I was always a big eater, and I was always kind of ashamed of it ... if I eat too fast my mom will yell at me. I remember being on stage like, ‘Oh my God, I don't have to hold back. I don't even have to be ashamed of it.’ And so it was perfect."

As for expectations for Saturday's contest, Chestnut isn't focusing on setting a new world record. He's just trying to keep up.

"[I'll need to] find a rhythm," Chestnut said. "I'm a little bit worried - I'm a little bit fat. It's a fast-paced contest. So, I need to make sure that I just find a rhythm. Don't forget to breathe; if I hold my breath, then I get winded. So, I just need to make sure I'm not being lazy. If I find that perfect rhythm, hopefully I can carry it to a record.”

Smoke-A-Palooza will be livestreamed on Smoke’s Poutinerie YouTube Channel, as well as Twitch. Or, you can catch the excitement live on screens at Smoke’s Poutinerie restaurants across Canada.