Struth! Heart Attack Grill claims another customer

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that for two years John Alleman has stood outside the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas spruiking its famous calorie-laden hamburgers, and exhorting passers-by to come in and try.

Burgers that included the 1.444kg (3lb 3oz) Quadruple Bypass which the Guinness Book of Records recognises as the world’s most calorie-laden with 9,982 calories per burger… and, which John constantly enthused with four layers of beef pattie, bacon, cheese, tomato and onion, “has a taste worth dying for.”

Last week after a hard day’s spruiking at the Heart Attack Grill, 52 years old John bade diners farewell, walked down to the nearby bus stop – and dropped dead.

Of a heart attack.

John Alleman was the Heart Attack Grill’s second spruiker to pass away: the first, Blair River scaled-in at a whopping  260kg (that’s a quarter of a tonne) and died in early 2011 of pneumonia. And the Las Vegas Sun reported that last year a male customer and a female customer had separately both reported to a local hospital after “being stricken with what were believed to be heart problems while eating Triple and Double Bypass Burgers.”

And maybe the Grill’s fries too, which are cooked in pure lard.

The Heart Attack Grill’s owner has described John Alleman’s death as “a wake-up call,” and said he would be greatly missed. “He lived a very full life, and ate and breathed the Heart Attack Grill.”  But no, the calorie-laden burgers would not be taken off the menu, he said, “while ever the public has an appetite for them.”