Competitive eating made its debut at this year's Newcastle Regional Show and proved to be a crowd-pleaser.
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Harry's Schnitzel Joint, Doughheads, Criniti's, AustChilli Group and Millers Pie & Sandwich Bar all jumped on board and are likely to return next year.
All but Criniti's and AustChilli Group hosted preliminary eating competitions.
"This ensured we got the best of the best competing on the day," Newcastle Show event planner Nicholas Niven said.
"With the other two categories we accepted sign-ups on the day. It was amazing - the people who won the chilli-eating competitions, it was like the heat didn't affect them at all. One of our contestants ate two Carolina Reapers just for fun afterwards."
The Show Burger was piled high with random ingredients donated by food vendors at the showground on the day.
"If you saw the burger you wouldn't go out of your way to eat it. It had a corn cob, Dutch pancakes, fairy floss, a Dagwood Dog - think of any carnie food and it was on that burger," Niven said.
He was thrilled with the crowd response to the competition and said it would "definitely be back" next year.
"It was a bit of a dark horse to begin with but ended up drawing the biggest crowds we've seen in the exhibition centre for a while," he said.
"Competitive eating is huge in America and is starting to get some traction here. We were told that if we put big prize money on, competitors who were internationally ranked would start start entering and we wanted to avoid that. We kept it local. It made it more entertaining."
A week earlier Novocastrian Jamie Miller, otherwise known as Lemon Blossom, won a hot dog eating contest at the Crown & Anchor Hotel (10 large hot dogs in five minutes). He was ranked 17th in Australia when he retired from the Competitive Eating Australia circuit last year and has several eating titles to his name.
Niven said the Show "achieved a small increase in attendance" from last year.
"Considering everything that happened in terms of the drought, bushfires, coronavirus as well as competing against a large number of other events on the same weekend, we did remarkably well. Our numbers roughly sat around 36,000 to 37,000 for the three-day event."