Will Ferrell Tackles a 72-Ounce Steak Challenge While Dressed as Sherlock Holmes

Will Ferrell has nothing left to prove in a career that has spanned four decades and countless classic comedies, so it’s only fair that the 55-year-old Saturday Night Live alumnus should get to spend his time doing what he loves. Which, apparently, is eating four-and-a-half pounds of steak in the Texas Panhandle while wearing a deerstalker.

This past Saturday, diners at The Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, were treated with a surprise visit from the Elf star — Ferrell arrived at the popular north Texas steak spot with a camera crew, a head-to-toe Sherlock Holmes fit and a Texas-sized appetite. Along with veteran SNL writer Harper Steele, Ferrell took on The Big Texan’s signature 72-ounce steak challenge, wherein contestants are given one hour to eat every bite of a shrimp cocktail, a baked potato, a (seemingly superfluous) salad, a bread roll and a colossal slab of home-grown Texas steer.

I have a hunch that, later that night, Sherlock the Elf was forced to solve The Case of the Clogged Colon.

According to sources from the Lone Star State, Ferrell told locals that the appearance at The Big Texan was for a road-trip documentary that has already hit similar spots in Indiana and Washington, D.C. Frank the Tank is reportedly traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast, presumably with ample bathroom breaks in between for the Texas-sized toilet destroyers that come from consuming half a cow in one sitting.

Ferrell’s dinner at The Big Texan is, of course, the second time the comedian has cosplayed as Sherlock Holmes — he and his longtime collaborator John C. Reilly starred in the 2018 mystery-comedy Holmes & Watson as the crime-solving duo respectively. Holmes & Watson was marred by a decade spent in production hell and a plethora of pop-culture references that had long since dry-aged out of relevance by the time it was released, and the film would go on to be one of the most critically panned movies of the year, winning four Razzies on six nominations, including Worst Picture. 

So, just like the last time Ferrell donned the Holmes costume, his dinner at The Big Texan also ended up as a huge piece of shit.