The HearT Attack Grill, the Las Vegas restaurant whose slogan proudly boasts that its artery-clogging fare is “worth dying for”, appears to have claimed another victim.
Less than two years after its unofficial spokesman, 260kg Blair River, died of health-related causes, another loyal customer succumbed to a heart attack while standing at a bus stop in front of the establishment.
John Alleman, 52, who like River served as a public face of the restaurant, died last week, three days after suffering his heart attack, according to the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.
Alleman, who worked as a security guard, was the inspiration for the “Patient John” caricature that adorns the grill’s menu and merchandise.
Unlike his predecessor as the eatery’s unofficial mascot, Alleman was a relatively trim 81kg. That was proof, said the restaurant’s owner, that heart attacks could happen to anyone.
“You don’t have to be tremendously old or fat. You can be in your 30s and 40s and die of a heart attack,” The Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso said.
River died of flu-related pneumonia, at the age of 29, he said.
Basso said Alleman’s death was a “wake-up call”, but he would not stop serving the famous “Quadruple Bypass Burger”, billed as the world’s “most calorific” at 41 765 kilojoules, as long as there was a public appetite for it. – Sapa-AFP