Who's More Solid Than Terry Crews?

Who’s more solid than Terry Crews? Who?! Actor, author, fitness freak, spokesman, husband, father, grandfather(!), activist, possessor of a smile that makes a wrong world seem right. Who else shoulders more, does more, gives more? Lauren Larson shares a well-deserved cheat meal with the strongest man in Hollywood.

- Lauren Larson

If you are what you eat, then Terry Crews is a mega sandwich from Fat Sal’s Deli in Los Angeles, a giant à la carte Frankenstein of everything the place offers, conceived in the most unrestrained corner of his mind. Crews goes to Fat Sal’s once or twice a week for his cheat meal. In his sandwich’s warm hoagie embrace are the following: assorted lunchmeats, potato chips, bacon, a hamburger patty, and a hot dog. “You can double or triple it up,” he adds. The sandwich is fully optimized— other sandwiches measure their own limp innards against it and give up. “It’s gigantic and it’s got everything,” Crews says, placing his hands almost to the edges of the table to indicate its size.

“Oh my God. It’s like heaven,” he says.

Tonight, Crews will make do with just a burger burger. We’re sitting in “the garden” of West Hollywood’s Soho House, a members-only club. A woman in a black dress with a deep slit up the leg walks by, trailing a waddling pit-bull terrier. If the building were zoned for fowl, there would be peacocks strutting around, feeling right at home. Crews is not one of those guys who look really strong on TV but shrink in person. He seems even bigger: People spend long hours Photoshopping themselves to look this muscular. Even in a sweater and white buttondown, he looks perma-flexed throughout our four-hour conversation. He orders the burger and some fries, lays out plans for dessert, and then returns to discussing his soul sandwich with the barely contained desire of a man on an Everest climb reminiscing about home.