Caleb Westphal hasn’t missed a Friday fish fry since 2013. Follow his never-ending adventures—sponsored by Miller High Life—HERE. This week: fish fry #598, at Wendt’s On The Lake in Van Dyne, Wisconsin. And: Big Mac #35,181, at the McDonald’s on Military Road in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
“No, I mean it, you’ve got a nice place. It’s not every man that can live off the land, you know. You do your own thing in your own time. You should be proud.”
– Peter Fonda as Wyatt in Easy Rider
On Wednesday, May 17, 1972, three years and five days after Easy Rider made its debut at Cannes (and exactly one month before the Watergate break-in, to provide more historical context), Don Gorske pulled his 1966 Dodge Polara—which he had purchased about 15 minutes earlier from his father—into parking spot #3 at the McDonald’s on Military Road in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. It was the first and only McDonald’s in Fond du Lac at the time, and the 100th to open worldwide.
Gorske, a fan of double burgers, had previously met the owner of the McDonald’s, Walter Rause, while working as a shoeshiner at Fond du Lac’s South Hills Club. Rause learned of Gorske’s love for double burgers, and while seeing Gorske eat one at the club one day, told him, “You should be eating one of my McDonald’s Big Macs,” the burger that McDonald’s debuted nationwide in May 1968. Gorske replied, “On the day I get a car, I will drive over to your McDonald’s and try one of your Big Macs.”
Don Gorske is a man of his word. As he puts it, “When I tell somebody something, it’s a promise.” On that pivotal day, Gorske ordered three Big Macs and a Coke for $1.57 and ate them in his car in parking spot #3. He went back twice that day, eating a total of nine Big Macs. He put the empty Big Mac containers in the back seat of his new car.
So began the dietary journey of Don Gorske, 71, who holds the Guinness World Record for the “most Big Mac burgers eaten in a lifetime,” who hit another milestone of eating 35,000 of them on March 15, and who as of this writing—if I’m doing my math correctly, but if you ask him he can tell you the exact number—will be eating Big Macs 35,195 and 35,196.
While the feat of Don Gorske is unparalleled, and I don’t want to suggest that what I’ve done with fish frys is comparable to what Gorske has done, there are some similarities between his story and mine. For one, we both have a specific food that is never far from mind that has had a considerable impact on our lives. For another, we keep track of how many times we eat this specific food—Don since day one, on May 17, 1972, and me since the first Friday of 2014, some 598 Friday fish frys ago. We’ve both applied for a Guinness World Record related to that food. He first applied in 1981 and received the record in 1997—he wrote to Guinness for years, but it wasn’t until he hit 25 years of eating Big Macs that they were ready to give him the record. I applied in September 2016 and was rejected in November. (I was interviewed by Milwaukee Record the following March, and started this column that April.) Lastly, we both have a connection to Fond du Lac. Don lives there and ate his first Big Mac there from what is still his favorite McDonald’s (although the building has been rebuilt). I was born there and lived there until I was 21. It even turns out that one of his first cousins once removed was my best friend in middle school.
So I had an idea. What if Don and I had a Big Mac lunch and Friday night fish fry dinner together? I tried to contact him online, but it didn’t appear that the Facebook and Instagram pages that had his name associated with them were active, and maybe weren’t even his accounts, so I decided to write him a letter. To my great joy, he wrote me back!
We exchanged a few letters in about a month’s time. He readily agreed to my idea, but suggested that if we had the meals, I should also take the Big Mac tour of his house, “which takes about an hour.” He asked if it was okay if his wife Mary came along for the fish fry. “Since I ate my first Big Mac on May 17, 1972, we have gone out for a fish fry 58 times,” he wrote, and included the list of places they’ve gone on a separate sheet.
He went on to share that perch is in his “Top 5 favorite foods.” He shared that the last fish fry he had was at Wendt’s On The Lake, on Wednesday, July 12, 2023, and that he was last there for perch on a Friday on July 22, 2005. (The wait can be long on Fridays at Wendt’s.) He said that he considers Wendt’s to serve the best perch dinner in the world. “A fish fry for me is perch only, I never get any other kind of fish,” he wrote.
So, it seemed to me that Don and I just had to go to Wendt’s, because it’s not only his favorite place to get perch, but mine. (I said as much in Ron Faiola’s 2017 documentary We’re Here For A Fish Fry, when I was interviewed inside of Wendt’s.) I asked if it was okay if my friend Wes joined us for the day, and he said that was fine. He offered to buy us our McDonald’s lunch “just for coming to see me,” and I offered to buy his perch. We made plans to meet at the Military Road McDonald’s at noon on Friday, June 13.
The anticipation built minutes before noon as I sat near the large photo of Don on display in the restaurant, which shows him holding Big Mac #19,170 while standing under the Statue of Liberty. Lennon may have given the peace sign, and Lady Liberty holds fast to a torch, but Gorske held a Big Mac. All symbolize freedom in their own right. And then I looked towards the door and there he was, wearing his trademark round glasses and a Big Mac T-shirt, just like in the Statue of Liberty photo.
Don asked Wes and me what we wanted to eat, and he went up to the register to order. All three of us had a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke. When the original Military Road McDonald’s was knocked down in 2008 and rebuilt a few feet over from where it had been standing, opening the following year, Don made sure to pace off the steps from the sidewalk to determine where parking spot #3 would be located in the new building. So when he goes to his favorite McDonald’s, he still sits in the same spot he did on that day in May of 1972, but he’s now inside the building.
Don sat at his usual seat and I sat across from him. Don held up Big Mac #35,181 and I held up the first Big Mac I’ve had in close to 20 years. Wes snapped a picture. We ate our Big Mac lunch.
Don told us that he usually doesn’t eat at the restaurant anymore. Instead, he stops there on Mondays to order six Big Macs and on Thursdays to order eight, and then eats them at home throughout the week. He never eats a Big Mac before noon, but sometimes doesn’t have his first until 3 or 4 p.m. When he arrives on a Monday or Thursday, the workers up front often exclaim “Gorske’s here!” so the workers making burgers know to throw patties on the grill. It’s not only the workers who might recognize him. After finishing our lunch, another patron asked if they could get their picture with Don, which he was happy to do. “Thanks for noticing,” he made sure to tell them before they went on their way.
Don Gorske may not live off the land—he primarily lives off Big Macs. But he does his own thing in his own time, and for that he should be proud. He may be the “Big Mac Guy,” but through his letters and with my time spent with him, I found him to be so much more. He’s sincere. He’s a man of dignity and decency, a family man and a man of faith. He’s not attention-seeking, but if people want to chat or take a picture with him, he’ll give them his time. He’s humbled and appreciative of others noticing him and by those who take the time to reach out to him, and humbled by the gifts people give him and make for him. He told me if someone gives him a gift, he’ll keep it forever. It’s apparent he’s not only humbled, but truly relishes and gets a kick out of it all, his voice lifting with enthusiasm as he recounts endless anecdotes and stories of people, gifts, and the small occurrences that have filled his life.
He lives simply. He doesn’t have a cell phone or computer. He saves everything, wastes nothing, and sometimes spends time picking up litter; this may all stem from growing up rather poor with seven siblings. (He grew up wearing hand-me-down clothes, but was given a brand new winter coat when he was in 8th grade, which he still has in his closet.) He may have a good retirement plan from working 25 years as a prison guard, and he may have gotten worldwide attention for eating Big Macs, but he has never forgotten where he came from and the important things in life: friendship, family, faith, simple living, and everyday joys. (He wrote in one letter: “Just so you know, I’ll never consider myself famous. Sure, a lot of people probably know about me, but I’m not famous.”) In short, he lives his authentic self, and no amount of attention or fame will change that. He’s one of the real ones.
After getting a photo with Don in front of the Golden Arches, he had us follow him to his house so we could take the Big Mac tour. His house is like a living museum, with photos, McDonald’s items that he’s collected and that have been given to him, and thousands upon thousands of Big Mac cartons that he’s saved from over the years. He has hopes that one day all of it will be in a standalone museum, perhaps located next to his beloved McDonald’s, but he’s okay if that doesn’t happen—he takes it all in stride.
The first thing I noticed when walking into his living room was his display of Big Mac cartons. The display houses the 35 cartons that McDonald’s used from 1972 through 2012, along with some cartons from around the world: Japan, the Netherlands, Guatemala, Romania, China, Canada, Italy, Greece, and the Czech Republic. Don ate some of the Big Macs from around the world, including the Czech Republic Big Mac. “It took like five days, but I still ate it,” he recalled, saying it doesn’t bother him and that he’s eaten enough of them that were at least five days old.
Over the years, he’s heard many insults or jokes about his Big Mac obsession, but they roll off his shoulders. He said that working as a prison guard for 25 years gave him the ability to not let it bother him. While many inmates also gave him a hard time for eating so many Big Macs, some thought it was pretty cool and even created some art for him, including drawings and an elaborate staff, also on display in his living room, with a Big Mac at its top. It’s made completely of wood, down to the onions.
Some of the other items he showed us in his living room include pictures of his four grandchildren as babies seeing Big Macs for the first time, a picture of him eating the first Big Mac at the new Military Road McDonald’s, a picture from when he ate Big Mac #15,000 on Jonathon Brandmeier’s show in Chicago, and from when he ate Big Mac #15,001 later that day at McDonald’s headquarters in Oak Brook, the only time he’s ever been to the headquarters, which has since moved back to Chicago. Don says McDonald’s is a little coy about him: “They know I exist, but I don’t think they are crazy about the hair thing. Which is fine, I’m not going to change for them.”
There’s a photo of him eating a Big Mac in the stands at Bristol Motor Speedway in 1997. As Don tells it, he was given a pass to go to the pit area, he waited by Dale Earnhardt’s trailer, he got his autograph when he came out, and then he went back up and ate his Big Mac in the stands. Below this photo is one of him standing outside of the newly renamed Qualcomm Stadium on January 25, 1998, the day the Green Bay Packers took on the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII. “You can’t see it, but there’s a Big Mac in there,” he said, gesturing at the photo.
There’s also a photo of Don with the folks who took a picture of him that was included in a Guinness World Records book. Guinness flew Don down to Dallas in 2004, and a McDonald’s there made 335 Big Macs for him to sit on for the photo, as if he was sitting on a throne. “Out of the 335, I only ate one,” he recounts, but he’s glad that most of the Big Macs didn’t go to waste. He said that while it was against the law to just hand out the burgers to homeless people, McDonald’s gave him and the crew clean cardboard boxes, which they loaded with the Big Macs and set in dumpsters, after which homeless people came and got the Big Macs to eat. That’s classic Don. Why should all this food get thrown away when there are people in need who could eat it?
After taking in the living room, it was time for the Big Mac room. “See, and what’s special in here is that almost everything in here was given to me by somebody that my record meant something to,” he smiles. One of his most prized possessions is a Ronald McDonald doll. There’s a Wheaties box someone put him on, hats from Jeff Kahlow, a Big Mac carton under glass that says “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS,” and a Trivial Pursuit card with a question about him. What he can’t display he puts in the attic. He also has another display of Big Mac cartons—these from 2012 to present—that also includes a few from other countries, and a carton that he received a Big Mac in that wasn’t a Big Mac carton.
Gorske describes himself as obsessive-compulsive, saying he documents “so much useless information. It’s just part of my being. I keep track of dates I’ve done stuff.” He keeps track of NFL games he’s gone to, places he’s gone out to eat besides McDonald’s (where he usually has a BLT or a fish sandwich), and when he’s gone to certain stores. A lot of this information can be found in his Big Mac room. “You can go anywhere around in here and you can find stupid charts,” he says. “Who keeps track of that stuff? But I do…It doesn’t hurt me, but it keeps me busy too.”
Don has also made a quest to eat a Big Mac inside every Major League Baseball park, NFL stadium, and NASCAR track—even going so far as to eat Big Macs inside stadiums that were being used when new ones were being built—and has pictures on the Big Mac room wall to prove it. Wes asked him if he’s ever had trouble getting Big Macs into the stadiums. “Well, I’ve worked at a prison and I know how to get stuff in…Most of the time, if I flatten it and just put it in my pocket…Only once did they catch me and I had to throw it away.” It was in Indianapolis. He made a return trip and got his photo. He said it’s easier now since they don’t pat you down like they used to and instead rely more on metal detectors. He said it took him about five years to hit all the MLB parks, and that he hit 1,000 miles a day on some of the drives to them. “When I do something, it’s intense.”
He’s had Big Macs at important North American landmarks, too. He’s had them at locations such as Bryce Canyon, Niagara Falls, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Space Needle, Pikes Peak, Alcatraz, the Grand Canyon, the Gateway Arch, and of course, the Statue of Liberty. Pictures of these Big Macs are also on the wall in the Big Mac room.
Across the hall from the Big Mac room, Don showed us a McDonald’s dollhouse he built. He built a lot of them in the 1970s and gave them away, but now he only has two. He showed us a sampling of many of his other McDonald’s artifacts from through the decades—sunglasses, pins, placemats, and games, including the 1981 Build a Big Mac game—much more of which he has in his attic. (He estimates that he has 200,000 McDonald’s items in his attic.) In this room he also showed us one of the most important Don Gorske artifacts: his original count calendar from May and June of 1972, where he documented the first big Macs he ever ate. This calendar hung behind the spot where he shined shoes at the South Hills Club. After those first two months he switched to wall calendars, then to pocket calendar booklets from the prison during his time as a prison guard, and then back to wall calendars after he retired.
His count started out at nine a day, before dropping to around five a day, until settling at the two a day he now eats. Early on his mother was worried about his health, so starting in 1974 he promised her he would eat one non-McDonald’s meal a day. This lasted until April 1, 1981, when he asked her if it would be okay if he went back to just Big Macs. It was important to him that he asked her before diving fully back into the Big Macs, “Because it was a promise, and I never break promises.” “Go ahead, they haven’t killed you yet, and they probably never will,” his mother told him.
Don has only missed eight days of eating Big Macs since he started. There was a giant snowstorm in Fond du Lac on January 4, 1982. He made it to McDonald’s, but they were closed. After this he started keeping Big Macs in his freezer. The next day he missed was on April 27, 1988. He made another promise to his mother, this time that he wouldn’t eat a Big Mac on the day she died. He kept that promise. He missed three days in the 1990s because he was on the road in remote areas and couldn’t find a McDonald’s, driving more than 600 miles two of those times in an attempt to find one, without any luck. During the same decade he missed two days because he was stuck at work and didn’t get out before midnight. He says that many of his fellow officers helped make sure he got Big Macs on other days when he couldn’t leave work to get one.
The last time he missed a day of eating a Big Mac was on Thanksgiving Day 2000. He thought he had some in the freezer, but he didn’t—he had forgotten to replenish his backups. He stopped at a number of McDonald’s on the way to a family gathering in Appleton, but all of them were closed. Joleen, the manager of his usual McDonald’s, later said he could have called her. “No, I made a mistake, that’s just the way it is,” he says of the last day he missed eating a Big Mac.
Don took us to his dining room and kitchen. He showed us the table where he’s eaten thousands of Big Macs while looking out at his backyard. He showed us his refrigerator and freezer. In the fridge he had Big Macs wrapped in Saran wrap for Friday and Saturday, waiting to be unwrapped and microwaved. In the freezer he had two Big Macs for Sunday, his two backup Big Macs which he changes out every six months or so, and two Big Macs from the last day they were served at the old McDonald’s, on October 10, 2008. “What are you going to do with them?” his wife Mary once asked him. “I dunno, I just gotta have them,” he answered. “I’ll just throw them in the coffin with you,” she joked. “I said that’s fine with me,” he told us. Don stacks the empty cartons from his Big Macs on top of the fridge. On July 1 he’ll box up the first half of the year and put them in the basement, then start stacking again for the second half of the year.
Don has been stacking Big Mac cartons on top of the refrigerator since he and Mary got married, which will be 50 years come December. Parking spot #3 was not only the spot where he had his first Big Mac, it was where he asked Mary to marry him (after eating a Big Mac, of course). Parking spot #3 was a comfortable spot, and he wanted to be comfortable to ask her. They had met in 1973, so by the time they got engaged Don was well into his Big Mac obsession, and Mary had an idea of what she was getting into. Together they had two sons. “I don’t think anybody in the world has eaten any more Happy Meals than they have,” Don shares. “And of course now they aren’t that crazy about McDonald’s like I am, but that’s fine, you know.”
Don took us to the basement, where he showed us the room where he keeps all his Big Mac cartons from 2006 through 2024. “Every two of these is a day of my life! I mean look at how many days of my life you are looking at here,” he exclaimed. The cartons from before 2006 are in the attic. Also in this room he has the bench from the old Military Road McDonald’s that he ate Big Mac #10,000 on, the seat he sat on during the filming of Super Size Me, and some bricks from the old McDonald’s that a friend who worked in construction gave him. There’s another room in the basement where he keeps many of his McDonald’s cups from throughout the years.
We were planning on going out to Wendt’s for fish at 4 p.m., but it was only shortly after 2 when we had finished the tour. Wes and I thought we might meet back up with Don in a few hours, but he invited us to hang out in his living room with him until it was time to head to Wendt’s. He turned on the Cubs game. They were playing at Wrigley Field, a place where Don has eaten a Big Mac. Mary came home and was just as kind and welcoming as Don, and we chatted for a while more. Then Don drove the four of us out to Wendt’s On The Lake (N9699 Lakeshore Dr., Van Dyne; 920-688-5231) to get the world’s best perch.
Until Don was in the middle of 8th grade, when he moved to Fond du Lac (for the first time), he lived in Denmark, just southeast of Green Bay. He remembers getting fish frys at a place in Kewaunee, but can’t recall the restaurant’s name—although he does remember playing a bowling arcade game with sliding pucks there. After moving to Fond du Lac in the mid-’60s, his dad started taking him to Wendt’s for perch. That’s right, the man known for eating Big Macs was eating Wisconsin fish frys before he was eating Big Macs. But fish frys were few and far between for the Gorskes, who didn’t have a lot of money to go around. It wasn’t going out to eat that became a highlight for Don each week, but the days when they got to have hamburgers, which became his food of choice.
Wendt’s deserves its own write-up apart from this article, including a deep dive into their history and all the specifics of their food, and I hope to get back to do it someday. They serve other fish besides perch, but their perch is the gold standard there, or anywhere else for my money. Currently, they offer perch dinners in 5-ounce ($19), 10-ounce ($26), and 15-ounce ($32) portions. The perch is available every day they are open. Friday perch dinners come with a choice of french fries, waffle fries, sweet potato fries, potato salad, or a baked potato, as well as with bread and coleslaw. Don and I both ordered the 10-ounce perch. I got mine with waffle fries, while Don got his with a baked potato.
“You’re the Big Mac guy!” someone said to Don as they were taking their seat at the table next to ours. “I eat other food too,” Don joked. It wasn’t long before we had our perch dinners. The perch was phenomenal, as always. That’s what happens when the breading knocks it out of the park with both flavor and texture, and every piece of perch is consistently meaty and flavorful. Wendt’s whips up a heck of a great bottle of tartar, too.
One might wonder about the health of someone who has subsisted mainly on Big Macs for more than 50 years, but at 71, Don is doing just fine. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t overeat, or maybe it’s because he’s very active. He takes walks as often as he can, and he even came out of retirement to take a part-time job boxing up signs three or four years ago. “They won’t find a faster boxer than me!” he proclaims. He’s had 10 cholesterol checks. His highest cholesterol reading was 178, but the next year it was at 129—almost too low.
“You really should do something,” a nurse told him.
“What do you want me to do, eat three Big Macs a day?”
“Oh yeah, that’s right, you’re that guy, don’t do nothin.'”
Before Don and I parted ways, I asked him if he was going to eat his second Big Mac of the day for a snack later that night, and he said he planned on it. I drove back to Milwaukee full of perch, with a Big Mac carton in the back seat of my car, just like Don Gorske did on May 17, 1972. For any given day might be the first day of the biggest journey of your life, and it’s never too late to go for it and start down the path. Thanks, Don. Long may you run.
Takeaways: Don Gorske is best known for holding the Guinness World Record for the “most Big Mac burgers eaten in a lifetime,” but more than anything he’s just an authentic and nice guy who does his own thing in his own time; Wendt’s has the best perch fish fry in the world.
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