One leaped out to a fast start. Another tried a steady approach. A third seemed to have a legitimate shot — until his stomach just couldn’t take all that gruyere, gouda and sharp cheddar.
That was the fate of three young men who attacked the “Caseus Cheese Truck Challenge” Friday afternoon.
The rules: Eat 10 of the truck’s grilled-cheese sandwiches in an hour, and you get a T‑shirt, a free sandwich once a week for a year and a namesake sandwich on the menu.
Roughly two dozen people have attempted the feat. Only one man has succeeded.
Brian Punch, Andrew Sinclair and Michael Ackerson wanted to join the club. They gathered at a paper-covered table on York Street across from the Yale School of Architecture. A fourth challenger was touted on Facebook earlier in the day but failed to show.
About 30 people — friends, co-workers and the occasional rubbernecker — ordered their own (single) sandwiches and waited for the show.
A little after 1 p.m., Cheese Truck co-owner Tom Sobocinski placed five sandwiches in front of each contestant and started the countdown clock on his iPhone. (Click on the video above for the kickoff.)
Gwyneth K. Shaw Photo
Punch chowing down.
Punch, 26, picked guacamole as his condiment, and ordered a side of tomato soup. Sinclair, 26, and Ackerson, 23, chose arugula. (Everyone gets the same gooey mix of provolone, swiss, comte, gruyere, gouda and sharp cheddar cheese as a base.)
Punch jumped off to an early lead, downing five sandwiches in five minutes. He dipped them in the soup, then took bunches of small bites. The other two were less aggressive.
Someone in the crowd pulled out his iPad and cued up Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” as inspiration.
By the 10-minute mark, all three started to look a bit stunned.
“The cheese, it gets to you, man,” Sinclair said. “It’s like having a wad of Big League Chew in your mouth.”
Punch complained that his jaw was hurting, a likely side effect of the chewy, crusty pain levain the Cheese Truck uses. He asked for a Coke to augment the Pellegrino he’d been sipping.
Sinclair.
With 20 minutes gone, Sinclair groaned as he opened the container holding his next sandwich.
Finishing sandwich number seven was “a bad choice,” Punch said, shaking his head slightly and closing his own container.
By that time, truck co-owner Jason Sobocinski said, Punch had consumed a large amount of butter, about three-quarters of a loaf of bread, a pound and a half of cheese, and almost two cups of guacamole.
“Things Will Get Projectile”
Halfway through the hour, Tom Sobocinski urged Punch on: “You can eat a sandwich every 10 minutes. You got this!”
“Things will get projectile,” Punch replied. He stayed at the table, but didn’t eat another bite, at one point leaning back against a parking meter.
“I can still drink and eat. It’s just … cheese and butter,” he said, grimacing.
“Every time I take a bite, it’s like, ‘I don’t like cheese anymore,’‘’ reported Sinclair.
Ackerson.
But he pressed on. By this time, Ackerson had largely been reduced to nibbling on his sixth sandwich despite entreaties from his buddies. But Sinclair was working on a double-decker of sandwiches eight and nine. Until, all of a sudden, he stood up, reaching for the trash can that had been stashed near Punch earlier in the hour.
Boom. Game over — throwing up is an automatic disqualification.
“I feel so much better,” Sinclair said, smiling.
Punch said afterwards that “it’s doable, with preparation.
“You’ve got to have a stomach that can expand.”
Sinclair, still grinning, said he wasn’t sure if he was up for a rematch.
“It seemed like it got fattier with time,” he said.