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On October 30th, 2014 I woke up at The Flaming O on the Las Vegas strip. I was in town for Phish’s Hallowe’en run but the shows didn’t start until the 31st. But Vegas is Vegas (baby!), and I found plenty of wacky entertainment to fill my day.
First up (and focus of this missive) was the Heart Attack Grill, one of the most notorious eateries in a nation notorious for notorious eateries. Standing prominently at one end of downtown Vegas’ busy Fremont Street, the first oddity about the place is the industrial-sized scale that sits just outside the front door. This, of course, is to verify the weight of the Grill’s heftier customers; anyone weighing in at 350lbs or more eats for free.
With a motto like “Fighting Anorexia Since 2005!” it’s obvious the Heart Attack Grill is all about the pitch and the shtick. The gimmick is that the place is a health clinic that serves only the most unhealthiest food. Everything (and I mean everything) is cooked in lard. Heck, my coffee was half-lard (which wasn’t nearly as disgusting as it sounds). All who enter must wear a hospital gurney (which almost made me balk) and the wait staff are all dressed in sexy nurse costumes. Rumour suggested that every former manager of the place has suffered a heart attack.
The menu is a feat in itself. Boasting a list than went from a burger, a double burger, a triple burger, a quartet burger all the way up to an eight-patty burger, fries, shakes, and all things deliciously fattening, the only items on the vegetarian menu were cigarettes.
Which is pretty funny, actually.
Beside our table was a pillar with two handlebars conspicuously sticking out. “I wonder what that’s for?” I pondered. Just then a waitress led one of her customers to the pillar and told to him to bend over and grasp the handles firmly.
He did.
Then the waitress picked up a wooden paddle that looked like a small cutting board and, stepping back to get a good run at it, she let go with a mighty swing and smacked the customer as hard as she could on his butt. He howled in genuine pain as the rest of his party looked on with laughter.
“Now, now,” the waitress said, getting back into position. “You’ve been a bad boy and didn’t finish your dinner.
“That’s three paddles!” she said, leaping in for another hit.
I was aghast. “What’s this all about?” I asked our server as the man received his final blow.
“Anyone who doesn’t eat all their food gets a paddling,” she told me.
M’lady and I weren’t taking any chances. We each ordered the single burger, with one small order of fries to share between us.
The theme was pervasive. Bottles of wine were served in hanging IV bags, the walls were lined with crazy artwork, the centrepiece of which was a large cartoonish depiction of every fast food mascot imaginable rendered in a parody of the Last Supper, and in the bathroom I discovered one of my more devious inventions come to life.
Years ago I imagined starting a business that sold urinal liners featuring characters of polarizing politicians and world figures. So one would go into a bathroom and be able to choose whether to relieve themselves into the gaping mouth of either Bill Clinton or, say, Vladimir Putin.
And there it was in the bathroom of the Heart Attack Grill, my imagination rendered true in the form of an Obama urinal and a George Bush one. See? I have good ideas.
As we ate our meal two more people got paddled, one of whom literally ran screaming out of the restaurant after receiving his first smack. I really can’t imagine how they haven’t been sued over that.
We finished all of our food and were allowed to pay our bill without getting a spanking.
If not for the paddling pillar I’m not sure we would have cleaned our plates. It’s not like the food was exceptional or anything, but then I guess exceptional food isn’t really what they’re going for.
What they are going for is novelty and spectacle, and the Heart Attack Grill serves up both in heaps.
Todd Man Out 