A pair of professional eaters swapped the United States for Kilmarnock as they took on belly-busting food challenges.
Popular YouTuber Randy Santel, who boasts almost 1.5 million subscribers, popped into Hogan’s Sandwich and Burger Bar on St Marnock Street.
Both he and partner Katina took a challenge each, with Randy tackling the cob burger after completing the breakfast challenge six years ago.
Meanwhile, Katina embraced the breakfast challenge, which consists of 10 slices of toast, four slices of square sausage, four links, two tomatoes, eight eggs, eight tattie scones, eight slices of bacon, four slices of black pudding and beans.
She defeated the challenge in just over 30 minutes, the first woman to do so, but it was slower than her target of beating English YouTuber Beard Meets Food, who did it in less than 20 minutes.
Missouri man Randy, 36, then smashed the ‘Crusty Cob’ burger challenge which includes two pounds of meat, eight slices of bacon, one pound of cheese, and eight onion rings – topped with relish, lettuce and burger sauce, served on a one-pound bun.
Katina Loves Kilos told the Kilmarnock Standard: “I thought it was delicious, it was harder than I thought it would be, though.
“It looks pretty easy on paper, ‘oh that would just be five breakfast sandwiches and beans’, but it got to me a little bit!
“I was going for the record but I didn’t even come close. Beard smashed me.
“It was a good size that’s beatable as far as challenges go. I hope it encourages more people to try it.
“Usually if a girl wins a food challenge it’s more likely going to get big fellas coming in saying, ‘if she can do it I can do it’. That’s good fun when that happens."
In terms of how to train for challenges like this, Katina revealed: “Typically you’d train if you had a lot of days off, but we’re eating so often that the challenge we’ve done previously tends to be the training for the next one.
“But if we’re at home it would be, say, a large salad, lean proteins and topped off with fizzy liquids. That’s how I like to train.”
On his challenge, Randy, who bagged his 1,100th food challenge win in Killie, said: “There was a lot of cheese on it which was a surprise, but I love cheese, it was good.
“The biggest surprise was how good the bun was. I knew how good the Scottish beef would be, but the bread was really good, it was like a grilled cheese sandwich in the middle.
“Usually the big burger challenges have a large amount of chips, but this one didn’t have any at all.
“Both challenges were great, it’s a fantastic place to be fair. They are well-designed challenges and it was good to be back.
“I reckon I could beat Beard’s time for the breakfast challenge, but I don’t intend to come back to Scotland as I only have two years max of doing this left."
He added: “We enjoy the Park Hotel, we are staying there and it’s very nice.
“We went to the Dean Park which was great, people talk some mad smack about Kilmarnock, people told us to watch our stuff and not leave anything alone, but we’ve enjoyed it, nothing is scary and everyone is really nice!”
Hogan’s co-owner Mark Hogan said: “They are great. We met Randy before and it was great to have him back.
“I would urge anyone else to have a go at the challenges, just give us a call or pop in to arrange it."
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