There will soon be a new way to tame the late-night hunger beast clawing at your stomach.
Munchies 420 Café plans to open its doors in early August with a 187-item menu offered from 4:20 p.m. until 4:20 a.m. The new restaurant will fill the empty space left by I Love N.Y. Pizza in the UF Plaza, 1702 W University Ave.
It took a night of excessive drinking, hunger and lack of late-night food options for J.D. Chester to come up with the idea for the restaurant.
In December 2002, he opened the original café, commonly referred to as Munchies, in Sarasota, Fla.
"I took bar food and made it into delicious bar food," he said.
The menu consists of "Fat Sandwiches," such as the 3.5-pound "Fat Sandy" - a monster that starts with fresh bread flown in daily from Philadelphia and filled with two cheeseburgers sans buns, chicken fingers, onion hoops, spuds, mozzarella sticks and topped off with a helping of mac-n-cheese.
The menu also serves up "Dankalicious Chicken Nugs," cheesesteaks, salads, wraps and 14-by-4-inch certified Black Angus beef hot dogs made from a secret recipe and blended only for Munchies.
"They're not all lips and ass- holes," he said. "They're just good hot dogs."
Despite the large portions, everything on the menu is relatively cheap, he said, noting that nothing on the menu is priced over $10.
Food-challenge aficionados will have their hands full at Munchies. The "Fire in Your Hole" wing challenge asks patrons to eat 10 hot wings in less than 20 minutes with nothing to drink but a few sips of water, Chester said.
Victory brings you a free T-shirt, but failure means your face is immortalized on the wall of shame.
These aren't your everyday hot wings, however. These wings are smothered in "just about every pepper you can find," including ghost chili extract, he said.
Of the 4,000 or so people to accept the challenge, only about 80 have reigned supreme. Adam Richman, host of the Travel Channel's "Man v. Food Nation," got through only two of the wings before throwing in the towel.
The ghost chili is rated at 1,001,304 Scoville Heat Units, which is the scale used to measure how hot a pepper is. To put that in perspective, jalapeño peppers are rated between 2,500 and 5,000 units.
Attempts to conquer the challenge have left many would-be heroes chugging milk and asking for a doctor, he said.
Jose Martinez, a biological engineering sophomore, is determined to be one of the first to accept the challenge in Gainesville.
"I want to be one of the first people on the wall of shame," he joked.
Martinez said he's used to spicy food since he has a Spanish background and grew up eating it.
"I'm pretty sure I can handle it," he said. "I don't care if I cry during it; I have the willpower to finish it.
For those too inebriated to stumble up the stairs to the second floor restaurant, Munchies offers a golf cart delivery service.
On some nights, getting the food delivered would be a good option for those not wanting their late-night shenanigans broadcast to the world.
Filming for a reality TV show called "The Munchies 420 Café Project" has already begun in Sarasota and will continue at the Gainesville location, Chester said.
Because the project is still in its early stages, Chester said, what channel will carry the show is still up in the air, though he guessed it would be MTV2.
A sign will be posted to warn patrons that they will be filmed if they enter the restaurant, and filming days will not be announced beforehand, he said.
Don't expect to be greeted with a "hello" and a warm smile, either. The restaurant is known for its rudeness, and patrons have come to expect how unrefined the place is - it's all part of the theme, he said.
Workers throw food at one another and give your food to someone else if you're pushy, and you may even be hit by a flying tater tot, he said.
"We don't actually hate everybody," he said.
Though the staff isn't known for its sweetness, the restaurant offers desserts equaling the intensity of its normal food. "Death by Chocolate" is made up of chocolate cake, brownies, chocolate mousse, chocolate pudding, Cool Whip, Skor Toffee Bars and Kahlua, he said.
If you're looking for a little crisp in your dessert, there's deep-fried Oreos, Twinkies and fried apple bites.
"We'll fry a Snickers if you ask us to," he said.
