This Tokyo Restaurant Will Pay You To Eat This Enormous Bowl Of Ramen

Umakara Ramen Hyouri in Tokyo has reinvented the eating contest. Finish off their mega-sized ramen within the time limit to earn cash prizes, along with the honor of being one of just a handful of contestants who managed to pull it off.
Ramen is already designed to be a hearty, filling comfort food. Umakara’s ‘Mega Serving’ of ramen includes a whopping four servings of ramen in one. It’s piled high with fried chicken strips and bean sprouts – 8.8 pounds of sprouts, to be exact. All of that is balanced precariously atop a mountain of the house’s noodles and 24 ounces of broth, for a grand total of over 15 pounds of food.

The rules and stipulations are simple. First, pay 3,000 yen to enter. Puking up your meal will cost you another 10,000 yen and instant disqualification. Like most eating contests, help from others, leaving mid-competition or hiding food are not allowed. Anyone who manages to consume all the ingredients plus drink the soup in under 30 minutes walks away with 30,000 yen; the prize rises to 50,000 yen if you can do it under 20.

Participants can choose the level of hotness they want in the broth and topping, so there’s some customization available. Umakara Ramen Hyouri has been offering this challenge to hungry hopefuls for three years, and in that time, just nine people have been successful.