Blair River, 575-pound spokesman for Heart Attack Grill in Arizona dead at 29

Blair River, 29, of Mesa, Ariz. Blair, a 575-pound man gained a measure of fame as spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Ariz.

The nearly 600-pound man who gained fame as spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill –a Phoenix-area restaurant that prides itself in serving excessively unhealthy food – is dead at the age of 29.

Blair River's official cause of death is currently not known, but friends say he contracted pneumonia after a bout with the flu. He died on Tuesday.

The 6-foot-8, 575 pound man is being remembered as an energetic, creative, gentle giant.

"Cynical people might think this (River's death) is funny," the restaurant's founder Jon  Basso told the Arizona Republic. "But people who knew him are crying their eyes out. There is a lot of mourning going on around here. You couldn't have found a better person."

At the Heart Attack Grill, scantily-clad women dressed as nurses unabashedly serve its customers high-caloric food. The menu touts its 8,000-calorie quadruple bypass burger, “flatliner fries” fried in “pure lard,” a “butterfat shake,” and no-filter cigarettes.

(Heartattackgrill.com)

On the restaurant's website, River appears in a commercial that brags that if you're over 350 pounds, you eat for free. A sign in front of the building says, “Caution: This establishment is bad for your health,” and the restaurant's motto is “taste worth dying for.”

Basso said River—an Arizona state high school heavyweight wrestling champ -- was the creative genius behind the restaurant. 

"Even if he was skinny we would have given him the job," Basso said. "We would have just put a fat suit on him. He just had personality."