We were just talking about how much we love food competitions! San Jose's own competitive eater Joey Chestnut has kicked off the Super Bowl in style, winning the annual Wing Bowl competition in Philly by eating 173 chicken wings over the course of the day. All wings must be stripped -- strict rule. Chestnut qualified for the competition by drinking a gallon of milk in 41 seconds.

The Wing Bowl is a pre-Super Bowl tradition, and has been running since 1993. This year was the "Virgin Bowl," because for the first time, past winners were excluded from competition, meaning that our favorite competitive eater (scroll to 7/9/04, for a sample of our bloggery in the pre-SFist days), Sonya The Black Widow Thomas, couldn't re-eat her way to the top this go-around.

Local boy Joey Chestnut is considered a breakout rookie on the competitive eating circuit, coming in third in this year's Coney Island hot dog competition, second only to The Black Widow and the famous Takeru Kobayashi. Chestnut's beaten Thomas once before, in the Waffle House waffle-off (18.5 waffles in 10 minutes), and almost beat Kobayashi in this year's Krystal burger competition (and was even leading him at one point, the first time in competitive eating history that anyone's outeaten Kobayashi). He's considered a lock for the prestigious title of competitive eating rookie of the year.

Picture of Chestnut from the Int'l Federation of Competitive Eating website