Top Dog: Competitive Eater Heads to Hopatcong to Gobble Up Wild Record

The stomach is an organ about the size of one’s fist that can expand, albeit slightly, to accommodate the consumption of food and liquid to nourish one’s body.

But that’s not what Randy Santel plans to do with his stomach Thursday afternoon. If all goes according to plan, the competitive food-eating champion with wins across America and internationally will turn his stomach into a hot dog repository.

Sabretti’s Hot Dogs & Wild Game Sausages, located in Hopatcong and known for its weird, wild, and downright odd food offerings will host the competitor at 2 p.m. Nov. 6, who plans to take down the current record set by a Rockaway resident.

Randy Santel, founder of foodchallenges.com, who has nearly 200 food challenge wins, plans to take down all 30 of Sabretti’s specialty dogs in alphabetical order – in just 30 minutes.

The store’s record, previously set by professional wrestler Peter Bond, is 19 of Sabretti’s specialty dogs in just 30 minutes. The 443-pound Rockaway man could have continued, but since Sabretti’s contest rules are set in 15-minute challenge increments, Bond thought the record would be harder to beat in a shorter time frame, according to store owner Rohan Shetty. Bond will be on hand to see his record potentially go by the wayside.

Hitting 20 of the dogs in under 30 minutes will give Santel the store record; eating all 30 in a half hour will net him a grand prize of $1,000 in gift certificate format.

Since Santel is from out of state, he’s already told Shetty he’ll be donating the gift cards to local organizations upon his win.

One more rule for Santel: once he’s completed all the eating, he must stay seated for 10 minutes to let the food “settle.” Any vomiting within that 10 minutes will result in a complete disqualification.

“The last four hot dogs on the board are very spicy,” Shetty said, who studied food science at Montclair State University. “I’m not sure how this is going to go. It’s one thing if you’re eating all the same food, but we have a huge variety. Once you start mixing all different kinds of foods, you don’t really know how the body is going to react.”

One more perk, Shetty said, is that one of Sabretti’s specialty dogs will be renamed the Randy Santel Dog if the challenge is completed.

The public is invited to see the event at Sabretti’s, located at 22 Lakeside Boulevard in Hopatcong. Santel is scheduled to begin the competition at 2 p.m.