{"id":184970,"date":"2026-05-06T03:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/184970\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T03:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T03:18:08","slug":"mr-grande-taco-crowned-after-eating-nearly-18-tacos-in-15-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/184970\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mr. Grande Taco’ crowned after eating nearly 18 tacos in 15 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vito ‘The Spoon’ Ruggiero championed Moon Tavern’s taco contest, devouring nearly 18 tacos to be crowned ‘Mr. Grande Taco’ and winning $100.<\/p>\n

DICKSON CITY, Pa. \u2014 A tavern in Dickson City<\/a> celebrated Cinco de Mayo with the return of its all-you-can-eat taco contest.<\/p>\n

Four men went head-to-head competing to see who could eat the most tacos on Tuesday at Moon Tavern, without getting sick, in only fifteen minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One quit halfway through the contest, while the others raced to finish. The winner of tonight’s all-you-can-eat taco contest: Vito ‘The Spoon’ Ruggiero, who consumed 17 and three-quarters tacos.<\/p>\n

The Spoon says, “Well, it was very challenging; they’re not your average-sized tacos. Eric warned me that they wouldn’t be the average-sized tacos, so I just had to grin and bear it and push through it. Just don’t pick your head up. Just keep going, no quitting.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vito was crowned ‘Mr. Grande Taco’ and also won $100.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vito ‘The Spoon’ Ruggiero championed Moon Tavern’s taco contest, devouring nearly 18 tacos to be crowned ‘Mr. Grande…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-184970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}