Heart Attack Grill nearly lives up to its name

How about this for a Las Vegas-based reality show: A restaurateur opens a new joint on one of the city's busiest tourist corridors and boasts about how unhealthy people can eat greasy, fattening, choloresteral-filled meals.

Then, one crazy Saturday night in Sin City, a man walks into the Heart Attack Grill, orders a Triple Bypass burger and has a heart attack right there at the table.

Only this isn't a joke. It's serious. We think.

"We make fun of coronary issues every day; it's how I make my living," Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso said Wednesday. "If this happened at the Olive Garden, nobody would care. People have heart attacks in restaurants every day. Everybody wants to sell a story."

Actually, it's unclear if the unidentified 40-some-year-old man suffered a heart attack. Las Vegas Fire spokesman Tim Szymanski only said emergency personnel were called to the restaurant Saturday night. Medical confidentiality laws prohibit him from discussing the man's ailment.

All we really have is "Nurse Bridget" a scantily dressed waitress pretending to be a nurse who works for a restaurant owner masquerading as a "doctor" telling Fox News that the man was "having the sweats and shaking."

But we need it to be a heart attack because this is how a crazy "news story" catches fire and goes viral across the nation.

Maybe it should be a soap opera. A drama series? Or, maybe it should be a documentary about how 8,000 calorie meals can have grim effects on a human being. Or a tutorial on how to shake yourself out of character when a human in your establishment is in some type of medical distress.

This is how Basso, who refers himself as a "doctor, his servers "nurses," his customers "patients" and orders "prescriptions" described the Saturday evening scene to Fox 5 news: "One of the nurses came back to me and said, 'Dr. Jon, we have a patient that's in trouble.'"

Even the Fox 5 reporter wasn't sure how to handle the "it's not funny, it's ironic, but not ironic in a funny ha-ha way" story, referring to the servers as the "nursing staff."

The restaurant offers triple- and quadruple-bypass burgers to patrons -- free if the customer weighs more than 350 pounds. It has an emergency defibrillator case that contains a bottle of Jim Beam. Waitresses check customers' pulses with a stethoscope before taking their order, although increased heart rates can probably be traced back to revealing nursing attire.

Fortunately for the unnamed victim, the Fremont Street diner's phone wasn't a little spinny toy that dialed Mickey Mouse or Goofy.

Emergency personnel were summoned shortly after 8 p.m. and rushed the man to the hospital.

Basso added that tourists were snapping pictures as the man was carted out of the restaurant, assuming the commotion was a publicity stunt.

In Vegas? At the Heart Attack Grill, whose motto is Taste Worth Dying For?

Basso said he has no clue how Fox News learned of the man's medical episode, but it wasn't from him. Basso said the man fell to the ground and was foaming from the mouth. Basso overheard paramedics say he suffered from "coronary issues." As he tinkered with his stethoscope wrapped around his neck, Basso added that most heart attack victims die within 48 hours, or, a day before the incident hit the news.

But, no, this was no stunt.

"I can't tell you the nature of the call," Szymanski said Wednesday. "If it was a false alarm, I would tell you it was a false alarm. It was not a prank call. A person was transported to the hospital."

Publicity? Well, the staff of "Good Morning America" set up shop at the Fremont Street Experience restaurant Wednesday afternoon. Basso is already booked for Anderson Cooper's show. Basso's restaurant was the top trending topic on Google and Twitter.

Some of the hundreds of tweets include this from Wall Street Bull: Fifty 3rd world kids should bundle into a really big trench coat & eat there. #deadlygreed

And this from Derek 789: Remind me never to go to the #HeartAttackGrill.

Finally, TrivWorks offered: Question for #PR & #marketing folks: A customer having a heart attack at heart attack grill: good or bad for #business?

Good question.

"I don't know what to tell you," Basso said, shortly before he shooed away a representative of a well-known public relations firm. "We don't really want people to have a heart attack. I would be so happy to go out of business. That will be when the very last junk food addict decides to go straight."

The restaurant's wanted or unwanted publicity came during American Heart Month so it's even less funny to representatives of the American Heart Association.

Jennifer Merback, marketing and communications director for the association in Utah and Nevada, said that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of Americans and shouldn't be taken lightly. Obesity and smoking are the leading preventable causes of heart problems. She said she is concerned that a restaurant such as the Heart Attack Grill could thrive during a time when even fast-food restaurants are offering healthier options and nutritional content on their menus.

"We're trying so hard to teach our children healthy eating habits and to see a restaurant cropping up, it's concerning," Merback said. "It's concerning and a little discouraging. It's not good."

The Triple Bypass burger consists of three patties. That, of course, is not nearly enough meat, so they pile a dozen strips of bacon on top of that, along with the standard burger toppings.

Still, Merback added that a single meal will not trigger a heart attack.

If diners have a heart attack at the Heart Attack Grill, remember that the owner is not a doctor, the servers are not nurses and the bottle of Jim Beam in the defibrillator case will do little good.

Contact reporter Adrienne Packer at apacker@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2904.

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