The Truth About Arby's Meat Mountain Sandwich

Daily Show icon Jon Stewart never seemed particularly fond of Arby's and "the meats" it so fondly brought up in commercials, but the host roasted the restaurant just like they roast their beef. When he left the roasting spit that was the show in 2015, Arby's released a farewell video of Stewart skewering their food, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Why not challenge your stomach to a fight?" Stewart muses in the clip. "You think pain and grief are hard to digest! It's like shock and awe for your bowels. The meal that's a dare for your colon." Perhaps the biggest dare on offer at Arby's is the Meat Mountain sandwich on its secret menu.

Added to the unofficial menu in 2014, the Meat Mountain sandwich "is only for the daring," writes Fast Company. The amount of protein might just drop your jaw (or force you to unhinge it) just to cram this meaty behemoth in your mouth. Its original incarnation contained eight different meats: Angus steak, bacon, brisket, chicken tenders, corned beef, ham, roast beef, and turkey. Eater reports that in 2017, a wild-caught Alaskan pollock fish filet got added to the pile. This carnivore's-dream-come-true somewhat comically comes with a slice of Swiss cheese.

Arby's created this Meat Everest in response to customer requests. While the company might shy away from comparing its Meat Mountain to an actual mountain that has claimed the lives of hundreds of climbers — as Everest has — a couple of food reviewers who reached the summit of this meaty beast paint an intimidating picture. When The Atlantic contributor Adam Chandler recalled the moment his editor asked him to climb Meat Mountain, he compared it to "Starbuck being tested by Ahab" in Moby Dick, a book about a ship that goes on a foolhardy quest to kill an all-destroying, all-conquering whale and predictably gets conquered and destroyed by said whale. Journalist Joe Froemming was less literary but no less foreboding when he titled his review "I Survived Arby's Meat Mountain Sandwich." So it's possible to win the self-declared war on your own digestive tract that John Stewart made Arby's food sound like. But were they pyrrhic victories?

Chandler described the sandwich as a "worthy foe" and groaned while eating it. But he said of his bite, "My mission ends in bliss." For Froemming, it was a different story: "I felt like I was hit by a truck that was followed by a clubbing by that barbed wire bat Negan uses in 'Walking Dead.'"