VIDEO: "I still wasn’t hungry the day after" - one man's attempt at Crack The Vault burger challenge

So we sent Man v Food enthusiast and Warrington Guardian production editor Keith Morris to give it a go...

I LIKE a challenge and I like food so when I was asked if I would take on a food challenge, it was a bit of a no brainer.

I’m also a big fan of the TV show Man v Food so in my naivety, I thought I had a good idea of what I needed to do to rise to the occasion.

The challenge in question was Institution’s ‘Crack the Vault’ which has been brought to the Palmyra Square restaurant by manager and chef Sharon Johnson following her 25 years of running restaurants in the United States.

Crack the Vault includes four half-pound burgers on a brioche bun, pulled pork, two chicken goujons, four bacon rashers, chilli mince and cheese with a side of chips, onion rings and mac and cheese.

It costs £25 but if you can finish it off in 20 minutes you get it for free plus an ‘I Cracked The Vault’ T-shirt and a 50 per cent food discount card for life. There is absolutely nothing in the challenge I don’t like and I was convinced I could give it a good go and do myself justice.

How wrong can one man be?

After some gentle ‘winding up’ banter, Sharon emerged from the kitchen with the fully-loaded wooden platter. To be honest, when first presented with the food, it doesn’t look that much.

Regular viewers of Man v Food will know the mantra of host Adam Richman: It takes 20 minutes for your brain to realise your stomach is full so I had devised a game plan beforehand.

Eat the carbs first – the chips, mac and cheese and onion ring – and try to get the lot knocked off in 15 minutes. But to misquote Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltketo: No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.

And so my battle plan went out of the window.

The burgers are so tempting, that’s where I made a start – protein first.

Honestly, all the food was fantastic and I really enjoyed the first burger, which included the rashers of bacon. The second one, with cheese, was great as well.

By the time that one had gone, I had eaten the equivalent of four quarter-pounders and used up half of my allotted 20 minutes.

I knew at that point I was doomed to failure. There was no hope, no way back. I did tackle the third burger, the one with the spicy mince, but by this time my pace had slowed to a crawl and my ability to chew and swallow had all but seized up.

I also managed one of the onion rings (really light, crispy, homemade batter), about half the chips, one of the chicken goujons and a mouthful of mac and cheese but I really had to call a halt after just 17 minutes.

Sharon had warned me the challenge was deceptively difficult and it certainly is. There is just so much meat to get through I don’t think it would have made any difference which way round I’d tackled it.

To quote Adam Richman: “Today, in the eternal battle of man v food, food won.”

A couple of footnotes to my food challenge:

I took on Crack the Vault at lunchtime. I didn’t eat a single thing for the rest of the day and still wasn’t hungry the day after.

And none of the food was wasted. I had two colleagues with me who happily finished off the challenge.

CHALLENGE TIPS ON ‘CRACKING THE VAULT’

Do it in the evening, not lunchtime. Sharon says those who have come closest to winning have taken it on at night.

Do it on an empty stomach. Adam Richman didn’t eat the day before taking on his Man v Food challenges.

Eat at least a couple of the onion rings early on. They are big but light. Stacked up, they make the meal look very tall. Eating a couple of them helps with the psychology.