Essentially the best for self sufficient homesteading. I wouldn't want the cornish cross equivalent that strugles to propagate without care, needs bags of feed or dies if you look at it funny.
Depending on where you live, a New Zealand/California mix is about as good as you can get for meat rabbits. They grow well and aren't overly delicate.
If you live somewhere with wild heat waves, just straight Californias, or some of the custom breeds from Texas A&M would be better to avoid heat deaths.
Also, you can just feed them grass in rabbit tractors, but they won't thrive like if they had access to a more varied diet. That's for all rabbits, not just meat rabbits
The ones in the story might be be Flemish or Continental https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish_Giant_rabbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Giant_rabbit
Though, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altex_rabbit might be the choice if you're after "grow quick for meat".
(I have no experience with livestock, there was a story about this on NPR a while back... I wonder what breeds that was... oh, there's another large meat focused bread in the US to consider)