Last week, we joined up-and-coming competitive eater Jessica Abdul Hussain at Pho Garden in San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood as she attempted the Pho Challenge.

Jessica is beginning her Sophomore year at Cal, and became interested in competitive eating after watching Joey Chestnut eat 68 hot dogs and buns and decimate the field at the 2009 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. Rather than enter speed eating contests, she decided to take on food challenges. Since March of this year, she has attempted a challenge a week.

For the Pho Challenge, Jessica came in confident, although we later learned that she had never eaten Pho before. Our server also gave us the following facts: (1) Only about 8 of every 100 challengers actually completes the challenge; and (2) No woman has ever completed this challenge.

For the unfamiliar, Pho is a soup that combines noodles and meat in a hearty broth. The Pho Challenge is the extra-large version of Pho Garden’s “Xe Lua”, which consists of two pounds of noodles, and two pounds of the following types of beef: Rare Steak, Tripe, Well done Flank, Brisket, Soft-Tendon, and Beef Meatballs. The two pounds of noodles may also be measured dry; the sheer quantity of noodles is one of the most daunting parts of this challenge. Challengers have one hour to eat all of the meat and noodles (but not all of the broth) in this massive bowl:

Jessica started the challenge by dumping a cup of ice in the vat of Pho to cool it down. Her strategy was to keep the noodles out of the broth to prevent the noodles from further expanding during the challenge:

At about 24 minutes in to the challenge, Jessica had made a big dent in the bowl but stated, “this might take me the whole hour.” She worked at a consistent, steady pace, without the fury commonly seen in speed eating contests.

With 10 minutes left, our server came back and transferred the remaining noodles and broth into a smaller bowl. It was very difficult to tell how much was left in the big bowl but, just facing the remaining noodles and broth, Jessica could see that she had her work cut out for her.

She gave it a strong final push . . .

. . . but the Pho Challenge would not be conquered on this day.

After the challenge was over, we learned that she prepared for this challenge by eating half a pizza earlier in the day, the prize from her success in the Belly Buster Pizza Challenge. We will post our complete video interview with Jessica separately in the next day or two.

Jessica has also vowed to return to Pho Garden later this month and take down the challenge, so stay tuned!!