The third seasonEpisode Guide – Travel Article. Travel Channel. Retrieved on 2010-11-26. of the food reality television series, Man v. Food, premiered on the Travel Channel June 16, 2010, at 9pm Eastern Time. On Man v. Food, the host, actor and food enthusiast Adam Richman, visits a different city to sample the "big food" of its local eateries before taking on a pre-existing eating challenge at one of the local restaurants.
The final third-season tally wound up at 12 wins for Man and 9 wins for Food (despite technically finishing his challenge in Indianapolis, Adam called it a victory for Food).
Episodes Episode Episode Number Original Air Date Winner San Diego, CA 1 (39) June 16, 2010 Man Adam traveled to San Diego to kick off the show's third season. First, he visited the Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop which gets its name and floor to ceiling decor from Mexico's high flying version of professional wrestling. Adam tried the Surfin' California Burrito, which is filled with carne asada, grilled shrimp, pico de gallo, shredded Jack cheese, sliced avocados, chipotle sauce, and fries. The shrimp and lime juice basted carne asada are cooked on the grill and the fries deep fried. The meats and fries are piled on a tortilla and the pico de gallo, cheese, avacado and chipotle sauce are put on top. Adam enjoyed his burrito in the restaurant's "Champion's Booth", a golden booth that usually needs to be reserved at least a day in advance. At Phil's BBQ, the second stop, the meat is cooked over mesquite wood. Adam tried a sandwich called the "El Toro", which featured grilled tri-tip beef glazed with Phil's homemade barbecue sauce and stuffed in a large Kaiser roll. The sauce is a hybrid of sorts of the thickness of Kansas City BBQ and the tanginess of Carolina BBQ. The sauce caramelizes with the meat on the grill when it is ladled on. This episode's challenge was at the Broken Yolk Cafe, a breakfast spot opened in 1979 that offers over 30 varieties of omelets. Adam took on the Broken Yolk Iron Man Challenge, a 12-egg, six pound omelet filled with sautéed onions, mushrooms, and half a pound of shredded American cheese, and topped with chili and more shredded cheese. The omelet is also served with of hashbrowns and two large buttermilk biscuits. To win, Adam needed to finish the meal in under an hour. To psyche himself up for the challenge, Adam fantasized himself as a masked luchador competing against another pair of masked luchadors (representing an "egg and bacon breakfast"). In the challenge (which only 400 out of about 10,000 challengers have completed up to this point), Adam finished more than half the meal before it got cold, making it harder to consume. Adam helped himself by adding guacamole to the meal and the plan ultimately worked in his favor as he finished the challenge in 32 minutes. For winning, Adam received the meal for free as well as a commemorative T-shirt and a spot on the café's Wall of Fame (complete with a commemorative plaque). Boulder, CO 2 (40) June 16, 2010 Food Adam visited Boulder, Colorado, home of the University of Colorado, for their unique food creations. His first stop was Beau Jo's, known for their famed "Mountain Pies" (large pizzas with a massive ridge of hand rolled crust filled with several different ingredients and smothered with melted mozzarella cheese). Locals are also known for putting honey on the crust. There, he tried the largest Mountain Pie, called the "Grand Sicilian", which weighed an astonishing . Seven pounds of dough are rolled and the crust braided to form the high ridge crust. Twenty ounces of marinara sauce are then added. Seven pounds of toppings are then added. A thick layer of mozzarella cheese is then followed by onions, green peppers, mushrooms, homemade Italian sausage, hamburger and more mozzarella. It is baked in the oven, pepperoni added and then baked again before serving. The second stop was at The Buff Restaurant (located across from the University of Colorado campus) where Adam experienced – and highly enjoyed – their "Saddlebags", large pancakes with bacon or sausage mixed into the batter and topped with basted eggs. The Buff is known for hearty dishes with a creative twist like their rustic eggs benedict smother in sausage gravy and pecan-caramel quesadillas. The Saddlebags start with their homemade buttermilk batter. The bacon is also not fried, but baked. The meat is then cut up and added to the still cooking batter. For this episode's challenge, Adam visited West End Tavern to face the West End Wing King Challenge. Unlike all other chicken wing challenges that Adam has previously faced, this challenge was a quantity challenge, rather than a spicy challenge. Wherein he would have to finish off a bucket of 50 buffalo wings (altogether weighing in at about ) in under 30 minutes; doing so would get him a free T-shirt, a spot on the Wall of Fame, and a coupon for a dozen free wings on a future visit. The wings are fried in hot oil twice to ensure crispiness. Traditional wing sauce is mixed with hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne, celery salt, black pepper and melted butter. The wings are tossed in the sauce and then served in a bucket. Adam's strategy was to try to eat two wings per minute, covering the wings in blue cheese as he went. However, he only made it halfway before the tactic backfired on him as the rich sauce slowed him down considerably. Ultimately, Adam ran out of time, having consumed 36 out of the 50 wings. Besides Adam, around 70% of all challengers have failed to achieve victory. This is the second and final wing challenge Adam lost.
Post-episode updates: According to media reports, Beau Jo's closed its Boulder location in September 2017 when its lease there ended in order to focus solely on a newer, larger location in Longmont. Cleveland, OH 3 (41) June 23, 2010 Man Adam visited Cleveland, home to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and one of his personal "favorite cities",Melt Bar & Grilled – Home. Meltbarandgrilled.com. Retrieved on 2010-11-26. for their big eats. His first visit was to Steve's Gyros at Cleveland's West Side Market, which boasts 40,000 square feet of food and is Cleveland's oldest public marketplace, to try one of their jumbo gyros. The gyro starts with lettuce, tomatoes and onions, a spoonful of their secret sauce (a sour cream-based Tzatziki sauce that includes cucumbers, garlic and eight other secret ingredients, instead of the traditional yogurt base) and then nearly two pounds of lamb and beef that have been cooked on a rotating spit. Adam next visited Hot Sauce Williams, which has been serving crispy fried chicken and tender ribs on Cleveland's East Side since 1960, to sample their "Polish Boy", a pre-baked and deep-fried Kielbasa sausage on a bun topped with the restaurant's signature hot sauce, fries, coleslaw, five-hour smoked pulled pork shoulder and then more sauce. On February 27, Adam visited Melt Bar and Grilled in Lakewood (where customers with tattoos of sandwiches would get 25% off their meals at Melt "for life"). They serve grilled cheese sandwiches taken to the extreme such as the jalapeño and cream cheese packed "Big Popper" to the perogi packed Parmaggedon. Adam faced off with the Melt Challenge: a grilled cheese sandwich (which uses nearly pounds of 14 different cheeses. Herb and sweet cream cheeses are spread on three thick slices of grilled artisan bread. Then, slices of smoked Gouda, sharp cheddar, cheddar-Jack are added and then melted in the oven. Scoops of rich blue cheese, creamy goat and crumbly feta cheese are added before another round of melting. Slices of Swiss, pepper Jack, provolone were added before another short time in the oven. Slices of American, Muenster, and Havarti are then added before a final round in the oven.) The constructed sandwich is then served with a each of fries and homemade vinegar-based coleslaw.Melt Bar & Grilled – Home. Meltbarandgrilled.com. Retrieved on 2010-11-26. Prior to Adam, only two people had successfully finished the challenge. This challenge had no time limit. Adam finished half of the sandwich and the majority of the fries in the first 10 minutes, but struggled once the sandwich cooled. Adam was able to get a boost by adding the coleslaw to the rest of the sandwich, and he was able to complete the challenge. Adam won a Melt T-shirt as a reward.
Post-episode update: According to media reports, Hot Sauce Williams closed for good in March 2018 when the owners chose to retire.
Post-episode update: After filing for bankruptcy protection and closing several several locations in 2024, Melt Bar and Grill permanently closed its final location for good in January 2025. Richmond, VA 4 (42) June 30, 2010 ManAdam visited Richmond, Virginia, the site of Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me Death!" speech, to experience their culinary creations with visits to Buz and Ned's Real BBQ, Black Sheep, and Caliente. At Buz and Ned's, Adam sampled a rack of hickory and oak smoked barbecued pork spareribs. To prep the ribs, they are brushed with a homemade sauce of Memphis style spices and worcestershire sauce. They are then smoked for four hours in a smoker with wet hickory and white oak wood. They are then glazed on the grill while cooking with a barbeque sauce mixture of Carolina and Memphis traditions. They sauce the ribs on the heat so the sugars in the sauce caramelize on the ribs. Black Sheep, the second stop, is known for its large submarine sandwiches ( long and ) known as "battleships", which get their name from actual historical U.S. military cruisers, such as the spicy shrimp stuffed U.S.S. Lafayette to the C.S.S Virginia piled high with Southern fried chicken livers. Adam tried a battleship called the "U.S.S. Brooklyn", a baguette filled with peach chutney, a full pound of Jamaican jerk chicken and cabbage and green onion slaw topped with roasted banana ketchup. Boneless chicken thighs are marinated overnight in traditional Jamaican jerk spices which combine scotch bonnet peppers, brown sugar, thyme, garlic, salt and green onions. The peach chutney is made by adding vinegar and crush red peppers to peach preserves. The roasted banana ketchup is made with bananas, rum, brown sugar, soy sauce and jerk seasoning. Finally, at Caliente, Adam squared off with the Stupid Wings Challenge, which had been defeated by only 30 of its 300 challengers up to this point. Eight jumbo wings are deep fried and doused in "stupid sauce" which consists of hot sauce, margerine, barbecue sauce, habanero powder, and cayenne pepper, plus recycled sauce from past challenges (which is kept in a "container of poor judgement", where the spices continue to marinate, thus making the sauce hotter over time) and 5 drops of pure capsaicin extract. Each wing is also stabbed with a fork so that the sauce reaches every part of the wings.Travel Channel star Richman attempts to conquer Caliente | Richmond Times-Dispatch . .timesdispatch.com. Retrieved on 2010-11-26. Adam had to eat all eight wings in 30 minutes without the aid of any dairy products or bread. He was allowed to drink beer or iced tea, however. Before the challenge, Adam signed a waiver and admitted to the crowd that he was terrified of this challenge. He felt immediate pain from the first wing and though he ate fast, he thought of giving up by the seventh. He pressed on and managed to finish the entire challenge. For his efforts, Adam won an "I'm with Stupid" T-shirt. He called the Stupid Wings Challenge one of the hardest "in all three seasons".Twitter / Adam Richman: Richmond, VA episode tonight. Twitter.com. Retrieved on 2010-11-26.