The Ultimate Meatball

It's 8:00 at night and I'm still burping up meatballs! In case you missed it, in honor of the big eating competition happening at Carmine's @ The Quarter @ Tropicana this weekend, we had our friends at Carmine's bring in three trays of giant meatballs for the first ever WAYV Airstaff Meatball Challenge - LIVE on the Mike & Diane morning show.

The meatballs we ate this morning, while very tasty, were actually bigger than the ones they use in the real competition. We estimated they were roughly the size of a cue ball in billiards. Heather, Karin, Mike, and I were the participants.

First up were Intern Karin and Heather DeLuca. Heather had been touting the fact that she was Italian for the last couple of days to try and convince us she would have a good showing. We love Heather - but one thing I've learned is that Heather is ALL TALK when it comes to these eating challenges (which she knows)! Understand that Heather is very petite. Her stomach is probably smaller than one of Carmine's meatballs. She's always up for the challenge though which makes it fun. Anyway - Karin blew her out...and honestly I was really impressed by how many meatballs Karin put away! She said she was less worried about beating Heather and more worried about setting the bar high for Mike - with whom she has a very competitive relationship. She tallied six full meatballs to Heather's 1.5 (boooo!)

Next up were Mike and me. I felt fairly confident that I would be able to beat Mike since I'm a very big eater and I outweigh him by probably 40 pounds or so. Anyway, he gave me a run for my money - but I think he was more concerned with beating Karin...which he did...by about one bite!

Here are the final results!

Paul "The Ultimate Meatball" - 7 meatballs
Mike Richman - 6.01 meatballs
Intern Karin - 6 meatballs
Heather DeLuca - 1.5 meatballs (boooooo!)
...Honorary sister station contestant: Rob Garcia - 5.5 meatballs

Thanks again to our friends at Carmine's for the delicious food. In addition to the MBs, we also had some really good garlic bread/pizza bread dipped in olive oil and some tiramasu (sp?) for dessert. Nothing like Italian food for breakfast.