Photo by philliefan99.

At first, Greg Maciog was bummed. When he’d heard that District Taco — an establishment he didn’t know anything about — was holding a taco eating contest, he assumed it would be in, well, the District. But District Taco sits in Virginia, with food carts in Rosslyn and Crystal City, and now a restaurant on Lee Highway in Arlington. Despite his location bias, Greg’s competitive spirit and reliable willingness to eat ridiculous amounts of food won him over when he was selected as one of ten taco-eating contestants.

Last night, ten eager taco-eaters lined up in the front of District Taco with large cups of water and a space for tacos in front of them, and clear plastic vomit bags behind them. (Why they had to get clear ones, I’ll never know.) From the giddy audience’s viewpoint, they were ordered left to right: Elizabeth Williams, Colin VanDike, Felix C., Maciog, Travis Frazier, Dave Kaufman, Chris Demay, Robin Castoldi, Andrew Danto and Rusty Pasini.

Each eater was assigned their own judge who would stand behind them and make sure they followed the rules:

• Eat as many tacos as possible in the 15 minute time limit. Once time runs out eaters would be allowed 15 seconds to swallow what was still in their mouth.
• Completely eat each taco before going on to the next one.
• Eaters would be given a rotation of the four taco types: egg/breakfast, pork, chicken, and steak.
• Vomiting will result in disqualification.

While the event was scheduled to start at 6 p.m., preparations, waiver signing and going over the rules pushed the start time back a bit. One audience member turned to Maciog and asked, “Nervous?”

“No, just starving,” he replied.