If a picture is worth a thousand words, then one recent video is worth a million hot dogs.
On Oct. 13, Jalen Tart, a reporter with NBC affiliate WIS was live-reporting day three of the South Carolina State Fair when a moment between him and a Polish hot dog brought him unexpected viral fame. In the clip, Tart concluded a segment by sampling some of the fair’s fare.
“I’m gonna take a bite of this Polish dog. Let me see what this is all about,” Tart says. He was standing with an unnamed man who presumably constructed the Polish dog with its heaped-on toppings.
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Looking down at the hefty food item, Tart says, “Let me take a bite of this.”
And bite he does. More than a few seconds pass before Tart says anything, and that’s because he has taken such a big bite it’s clear he’s having trouble chewing it in a broadcast-friendly amount of time.
Many emotions wash over his face: hunger, confusion, regret, fear, then regret again. Realizing his misstep mid-chew, Tart tries to power through it anyway.
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“Pretty good, pretty, pretty good,” Tart says with a softball-sized amount of hot dog still stuffed in his cheek. Tart bravely continues to chew and speak, throwing back to the anchors in the studio after a few awkward moments.
The clip cuts to Tart’s colleague, WIS anchor Judi Gatson, who looks quite tickled.
“Bring back a hot dog for everyone, Jalen,” co-anchor Billie Jean Shaw says at the end of the popular clip currently circulating the internet.
In just a few days, Tart’s big moment with state fair food has hit all corners of the web, from TikTok to X (formerly Twitter) and more. Popular James Beard-nominated social media account Black Food Fridays posted a reaction to the video, captioning it, “🌭 Salute this man for remaining calm in the face of adversity. 😂.”
Days after the reporter sat down with Shaw to relive the moment on WIS, Tart was gracious enough to unpack the moment further with us.
“I’m still shocked,” Tart tells TODAY.com, adding that he never expected the funny moment to spread around the internet, let alone as fast as it has. “I wasn’t trying to go viral. I was just hungry and I just wanted a bite to eat and that’s just what happened.”
Tart says he took such a big bite because he wanted to try all the toppings on the Polish dog.
“I was like, ‘OK, this is actually not bad,’ but then I thought, ‘I still got to swallow this thing down,’ and I just couldn’t get it,” Tart says of the initial bite, adding that he didn’t dislike the Polish dog, despite what others have assumed. “It wasn’t nasty, it was just the fact that it was a lot of food and I was just trying to get it down to give my reaction. I was just in the moment and I didn’t know what else to say to the anchors.”
But, when asked if he plans on ever eating another Polish dog, he responds with a resounding and emphatic “No.”
Tart, who says he has only been at WIS for three months, says Gatson gave him a little advice when he got back to the studio.
“I went back out (Monday). I did try out some more foods and drinks off of what happened Friday,” Tart says, referring to another segment that aired Oct. 17 which went much more smoothly.
“She said, ‘Just don’t take a big bite.’”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
