Cooks overwhelmed in ostrich sandwich raid

Maybe it looked too delicious to resist or perhaps the hours of waiting had simply provoked the appetites of spectators beyond control.

Whatever the reason, Iran’s eccentric bid to set a world record for making the biggest-ever ostrich sandwich appeared to end in failure after the evidence was eaten by the hungry watching crowds.

Organisers were trying to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by producing a 1,500 metre-long sandwich containing 1,000kg of ostrich meat. More than 1,000 cooks laboured from early morning in Tehran’s Mellat park to assemble the monster sandwich.

But as soon as their task was completed, popular enthusiasm overwhelmed the need for attention to detail as crowds began devouring the snack before its measurements could be verified…

“We still think the sandwich will be recorded in the Guinness book because of all the evidence and video footage that we will send them,” Parvin Shariati, a spokesperson for the organisers, told Reuters.

Never have eaten domesticated ostrich. Like most flightless birds, the wild examples are tough as leather.