Get Ready for Wing Fest 2009

I’m not a big fan of competitive eating. It’s kind of like watching You-Tube videos of perfectly good cars being destroyed under the guise “Cash for Clunkers”: You hate to watch, yet your eyes stay riveted.

I think eating contests are a gross waste of food, abuse of one’s body, and a slap in the face to the people and nations who go hungry every night. It’s as if we fat, wealthy Americans are saying, “We’ve got so much food we don’t know what to do with it—let’s make a game of it!”

But my personal opinions aside, it’s time for the seventh annual Buffalo Wing Festival to kick off. I have to admit, this year’s kitschy little phrases like “Cash for Cluckers,” and “economic” advisors like Hen Bernanke, Paul Yolker, and Warren Cluckett are pretty amusing word plays. (Read the full story here.) And the festival is a great way to market one of the few things that puts Buffalo on the map. I actually think the festival, from a PR and marketing standpoint, is a great idea. It’s the competitive eating stuff that still gets to me.

However (this goes back to the You-Tube videos example), when Man vs. Food is on Travel Channel, I can’t help but watch Adam Richman stuff himself to the point of sickness. For those not in the know, Man vs. Food combines gastro-tourism (gosh, I hate that word, but can’t think of one better) with some ludicrous eating challenge. Richman first visits a unique locale and samples some of the favored eating establishments. The show climaxes with Richman taking on some crazy eating challenge, like downing 18 milkshakes, or consuming a 16-egg omelet in under an hour. Sometimes man wins, sometimes he surrenders to the trash can (if you know what I mean…).

Ok, so what’s my point? The Buffalo Wing Fest promoters should have long ago contacted Travel Channel about Richman coming to Buffalo for the Wing Fest. He could’ve dined at Chef’s, Anchor Bar, and a few other legendary Buffalo restaurants, and then taken on reining champ Sonya (The Black Widow) Thomas in the wing eating contest. It would’ve been great publicity for a city that needs every shot in the arm it can get. Yes, I know, another Travel Channel celeb chef—Anthony Bourdain—was just recently in town for a filming, but the more the better.

Buffalo News, in a “Gusto” feature about Wing Fest, had the right idea in mentioning Man vs. Food. I think having Adam Richman come to town would’ve been some huge national PR for Buffalo and a definite boost to this already well-marketed festival.