An 8-pound Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and 45 minutes on the clock stand between Joey Chestnut and his next title, and this time the battlefield is a bar in South St. Louis. Salvage Yard Bar & Grill's Junk Yard Dog Challenge brings the competitive eating champion to the Southampton neighborhood on October 17, where he'll square off against local eaters over a pie loaded with toppings and a piece of St. Louis food culture.
The event was announced in August, and according to Salvage Yard Bar and Grill, Chestnut and the local competitors will have 45 minutes to work through eight pounds of deep-dish pizza, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting charity. As reported by KSDK, the night kicks off with an indoor fan meet-and-greet and photo session before the eating gets underway.
A House Challenge Gets a National Upgrade
Salvage Yard didn't dream up the Junk Yard Dog name overnight. The restaurant's regular menu already featured a house version of the challenge, giving diners 30 minutes to finish a pizza built from 45 ounces of dough and 24 ounces of cheese piled with toppings — and anyone who failed still had to pay full price for the pie, per the same Facebook posting from the restaurant. For the Chestnut event, competitors will have 45 minutes to take on the pizza.
The venue itself has its own backstory in the neighborhood. Located at 5406 Hampton Avenue, Salvage Yard opened in 2020 after transforming a former takeout pizzeria — previously home to Louie's Pizza Co. — into a full-service bar and Italian eatery, the restaurant's background notes. Its menu now spans both St. Louis thin-crust and Chicago deep-dish styles, including a signature B.O.B. pie.
Chestnut's Pizza Pedigree Runs Deep
While Chestnut built his reputation on hot dogs, winning his 18th Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest this year by downing 66 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes, his record book includes plenty of pizza. Major League Eating records show he set a world mark in August 2019 by eating 6.5 two-foot-long pizza slices in 10 minutes at Fat Boy's Pizza in Metairie, Louisiana, defeating fellow top eater Geoffrey Esper in the process.
Further back, Chestnut won the 2010 Pizza Hut Chow-Lenge in Los Angeles by eating 41 slices of 14-inch pizza in 10 minutes, topping rival Patrick Bertoletti after entering the contest already holding a personal record of 45 slices.
St. Louis's Own History of Pizza Feats
South St. Louis isn't unfamiliar with oversized pizza as spectacle. Pointer's Pizza's Pointersaurus challenge features an 11-pound, 28-inch pie and pays $500 to any two-person team that can finish it within an hour, according to KICK FM. The challenge offers local context for the scale of Salvage Yard's event.
Chestnut's St. Louis stop arrives while he remains under court supervision tied to an earlier legal matter. Chestnut was sentenced to 180 days of court probation running through October following a misdemeanor battery guilty plea connected to a March incident at a bar in Westfield, Indiana, as Hoodline previously reported. He was scheduled to appear in Terre Haute over Memorial Day weekend and continued to travel and make public appearances.
For Salvage Yard, the October 17 event doubles as both a showcase of its hybrid pizza identity and a charity fundraiser, turning a bar's house dare into a citywide draw. Whether Chestnut or one of the local challengers walks away having finished the eight-pound pie first remains to be seen when the clock starts.
