Man falls after Heart Attack Grill
“Doctor” Jon Basso thought “Nurse” Bridgett was kidding when she informed the Heart Attack Grill owner that a customer was suffering some medical difficulties in the dining room.
The situation was, in fact, as serious as a heart attack. FOX5 News Las Vegas reports that this past weekend, a man in his 40s began experiencing chest pains while consuming one of the restaurant’s signature 6.000 calorie “Triple Bypass” burgers. Basso, who is not a medical professional, called 911, and EMTs and paramedics arrived on the scene quickly.
The customer – or “patient” as they are referred to at the restaurant, which moved from Chandler, Arizona to Las Vegas last October – is reportedly alive and recuperating. Sadly, that’s not the case for the restaurant’s 575-pound spokesman, who died last March at the age of 29.
Heart Attack Grill is no stranger to controversy, actively courting fans and nayayers alike with slogans like “Taste worth dying for!” and “Cash only, because you might die before the check clears.”
Menu items like lard-fried “Flatliner Fries,” highly caloric “Butterfat Shakes” and unfiltered cigarettes abound, scantily clad female servers dressed as nurses take orders as “prescriptions,” and a house policy allows diners weighing over 350 pounds to eat for free.
Still, Basso calls the incident “horrible,” and had harsh words for those attempting to make light of it. He told FOX5 News: “The tourists were taking photos of him as if it were some type of stunt. Even with our own morbid sense of humor, we would never pull a stunt like that.”
Heart Attack Grill.
How about this for a Las Vegas-based reality show – A restaurateur opens a new joint on one of the city’s busiest tourist corridors and boasts about how unhealthy people can eat greasy, fattening, choloresteral-filled meals.
Then, one crazy Saturday night in Sin City, a man walks into the Heart Attack Grill, orders a Triple Bypass burger and has a heart attack right there at the table.
Only this isn’t a joke. It’s serious. We think.
“We make fun of coronary issues every day; it’s how I make my living” – Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso said Wednesday. “If this happened at the Olive Garden, nobody would care. People have heart attacks in restaurants every day. Everybody wants to sell a story.”
Actually, it’s unclear if the unidentified 40-some-year-old man suffered a heart attack. Las Vegas Fire spokesman Tim Szymanski only said emergency personnel were called to the restaurant Saturday night. Medical confidentiality laws prohibit him from discussing the man’s ailment.
All we really have is “Nurse Bridget” a scantily dressed waitress pretending to be a nurse who works for a restaurant owner masquerading as a “doctor” telling Fox News that the man was “having the sweats and shaking.”
But we need it to be a heart attack because this is how a crazy “news story” catches fire and goes viral across the nation.
Maybe it should be a soap opera. A drama series? Or, maybe it should be a documentary about how 8,000 calorie meals can have grim effects on a human being. Or a tutorial on how to shake yourself out of character when a human in your establishment is in some type of medical distress.
This is how Basso, who refers himself as a “doctor, his servers “nurses,” his customers “patients” and orders “prescriptions” described the Saturday evening scene to Fox 5 news – “One of the nurses came back to me and said: ‘Dr. Jon, we have a patient that’s in trouble.’” Even the Fox 5 reporter wasn’t sure how to handle the “it’s not funny, it’s ironic, but not ironic in a funny ha-ha way” story, referring to the servers as the “nursing staff.”
The restaurant offers triple- and quadruple-bypass burgers to patrons – free if the customer weighs more than 350 pounds. It has an emergency defibrillator case that contains a bottle of Jim Beam. Waitresses check customers’ pulses with a stethoscope before taking their order, although increased heart rates can probably be traced back to revealing nursing attire.
In one of the more unfortunate cases of a company living up to its name, a man dining at the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas had exactly what was on the menu: A heart attack.
The diner was eating a “Triple Bypass Burger” – including 1.5 pounds of beef and a dozen bacon slices – this weekend when he began complaining of chest pains, according to a report from FOX5. Paramedics quickly arrived to treat the customer, who is now recovering.
The restaurant opened in the fall and quickly made headlines for its fatty foods, with meals that regularly feature nearly 10,000 calories. Servers are dressed – scantily – as “nurses” who take “prescriptions” from their “patients.”
“Patients” who weigh more than 350 pounds eat for free. “Taste worth dying for!,” the restaurant’s website crows.
The owner, “Doctor” Jon Basso – who doesn’t actually have medical background – said the incident was “horrible.”
“It’s not anything to be taken lightly.”
He said the restaurant has warnings about its bad-for-you food on its door and menu but was still a “full house” midday Wednesday.
Basso blasted tourists and others who had mocked the customer, saying they “should be sensitive to the poor guy – he’s got a mom somewhere.”
“I don’t mind if people demonize me because that’s part of our shtick – we’re the bad guys of the hamburger industry” – Basso said.
But the eatery is far from the only one that has recently reveled in culinary excess. A number of restaurants have bucked the trend toward healthier food that currently has chains such as McDonald’s boasting of their farm-fresh produce and low-calorie options.
Witness Jack in the Box’s new bacon milkshake, which registers at 1,081 calories for 24 ounces – or the equivalent of two KFC Double Down sandwiches.
Carl’s Jr. CKE is famously unrepentant about its “big fat” burgers, even launching a series of commercials last year highlighting its indulgent menu offerings to its core “young, hungry guy” audience. (But not long after, the chain introduced a line of leaner turkey burgers.)
Even after celebrity chef Paula Deen acknowledged her Type 2 diabetes diagnosis and began repping diabetes drug-maker Novo Nordisk this year, she continued to plug her signature buttery-drenched recipes.