This BBQ Chain Will Pay You $500 If You Complete Its Grizzly Challenge

Everyone loves barbecue, right? It's one of the defining features of American cuisine, a unified culinary culture bringing together a variety of different styles, sauces, and barbecue food traditions into one delicious subcategory. The real question isn't whether or not you love it, but how much — enough to brave the challenge of your lifetime for a $500 prize?

That's the question posed by BBQ Bear's Smokehouse, a barbecue staple with locations in Asheville, North Carolina, and across Connecticut. The restaurant's "Bearwich Challenge" — which asks the question, "Are you grizzly enough?" — consists of two pounds of pulled pork, two pounds of brisket, and one pound of coleslaw topped with a pint of its signature grizzly ghost pepper barbecue sauce piled on one and a half loaves of Italian bread and served with two pounds of mac and cheese (via BBQ Bear's Smokehouse).

If all of that sounds good to you so far, consider these stipulations: you only have 30 minutes to complete the entire meal, and it costs $100 to lock in the order ahead of time, which you have to do to ensure they have all that meat ready for you. Oh, and if you do complete this challenge, there's a five-minute waiting period to make sure that what has been finished remains finished, if you catch our drift.

It's only fitting that Bear's Smokehouse has become so known for its Meatwich challenge. The restaurant was founded by professional competitive eater Jamie McDonald, who was named the 2013 Wing Bowl Champion after eating 287 wings in 30 minutes. That was the second-most wings in Wing Bowl history, trailing only the godfather of competitive eating himself, Takeru Kobayashi, who apparently moonlighted as a wing-eating champion when not busy revolutionizing the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest with the Kobayashi Shake.

The contest has also evolved over the years. The original challenge awarded $1000 to a trio of eaters who would choose one menu item and then attempt to eat more of it in 10 minutes than McDonald alone could finish. Needless to say, McDonald was often the victor.

The new competition comes with different hurdles. While the sheer quantity of food is, of course, brutal to overcome, one competitive eater said that the real problem comes from the ghost pepper barbecue sauce. While it's not quite to the level of, say, Dave's Hot Chicken, which requires a waiver to eat its spicy chicken meals, the constant presence of that spicy sauce brings on flavor fatigue and necessitates water, which can quickly fill up the belly. But if you can brave the heat, the meat, and the clock ticking down towards defeat, you can walk away a champion, with $500 in your pocket.