For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is a garbage plate. Of course the food that Rochester is home to has the word garbage in the name.... typical. Generally a garbage plate for me is mac salad, home style fries, and two hamburger patties covered in a meat sauce. Of course there are some variations, i.e. hotdogs, cole slaw etc. and tons of combinations. I'm not personally a fan of condiments so hold the mustard and ketchup. The goal if a garbage plate is to mix it up and get a little bit of everything in one bite. As you can tell, it's a lot of food. A lot. It's also pretty unhealthy for you. This thing has enough calories for the rest of your life on one plate but man.. is it good.
I'm slightly ashamed to to say this was my first whole garbage plate. It only took me 19 years until I finally mustered up the courage to eat one of these things but it was a good day. Since then I've had quite a few more from various locations all over Rochester. Not gonna lie, it's kind of hard to mess one of these up, so I haven't had a bad one yet.
Now for the impressive part. We know that I'm not a particularly healthy eater, as I've mentioned before. I had been planning on eating this garbage plate as a 19th birthday lunch date with one of my best friends. My birthday is in September. This was taken about 2 or 3 months after. Nailed it (not really). Since I knew this was the mission of the day I hadn't eaten all day. It took us both 13 minutes to clear our plates, I timed it.
To anyone who's ever had a garbage plate before, you know how impressive this is. We were pretty proud of ourselves. And slightly grossed out, but that's besides the point.
Now a days, I try to space out my garbage plates and only eat a few per year. It's pretty incredible how much I can eat though, and these things are so great and fun to make visitors try. It's like a Rochester right of passage for all of my cousins who come to visit and for all of my friends from college who are new to the area. I've taken quite a few people to get their first garbage plate. Spreading the over indulgence all around. Yum.