Advertisement

Feeding 400 hungry bikers: Pounds of potatoes, lots of ribs

A Gander pub has been stockpiling hundreds of pounds of ribs, potatoes and vegetables to prepare a major-sized meal for bikers rolling through on Saturday.

Thingamajiggers Pub and Eatery is cooking 400 rib dinners for this year's Ride for Sight in Gander. They will all be heated up and delivered on Saturday night, the second day of the fundraiser for the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

So far, restaurant owner Betty Sagi, her family and employees have peeled 120 pounds of potatoes and have cooked and frozen countless racks of ribs.

She estimates she's poured hundreds of hours into the project, but there's too many pounds of food moving through her restaurant to get a good count.

"I'm crazy! I like a challenge. That's it!" she said on Thursday, "It's a challenge … and I wanted to see if I could do it, and I think — well, I don't think I can; I know I can."

Hometown touch

Sagi says it's the first time in many years that the fundraiser's feature dinner has been cooked in the town.

"I knew it was going to be a lot of work. But I wasn't sure it was going to be this much — but then, I work, I work a lot, so it's not new to me."

She's bought all of her ingredients for the meal — plates will feature a rack of ribs, potato salad, macaroni salad, coleslaw and a bread roll — at Gander's three grocery stores.

The first trip was in March, and she has been shopping ever since. So far, she's taken about 50 trips.

Sagi said she prefers to shop discreetly, quietly dropping dozens of pounds of potatoes into her shopping cart, then heading to the cash register. But that doesn't always work out.

"Last Sunday, I couldn't find any ribs and I needed a lot. So Co-op was very accommodating," she said. "But you don't even wanna know the words [the clerk] said when I told him how many I needed."

400 or more

Restaurant cook Electa Horlick has been cooking steady, and Sagi said she has received a lot of help from family and friends.

"Usually, we've got like four, six or eight racks of ribs cooking here at a time," Sagi said from her restaurant kitchen.

The ribs are cooked and frozen, but the coleslaw and salad needs to be made fresh, so that's a job for her team in the lead-up to the big event.

And if the feed doesn't fill everyone's appetite?

"They told me 400, and I've got 400 ribs exactly. If there's any more than that, well, then they'll have to come up here and eat."

Sagi said the experience will be a chance for her to prove herself, and show off her restaurant.

"The next one's going to be 500. If I can overcome this challenge, I can overcome everything."