DazharionOne way to get the point across
henfredemars
ZephorahI think this is masochism. Food doesn’t leave any external marks so these people go with food.
I do lots of very spicy food. I think my tongue has literally been damaged over time, so stuff I don’t register as being even the slightest bit spicy are unbearably hot to others, and I have to really ratchet it up.
But what I’ve found at lots of Asian restaurants is that the staff assumes my pale, white ass can’t take real heat. I ask for “5-peppers” hot and they’re like “We’ll start you with a 2.” It’s annoying. I’ve never been served food that’s “too hot” in a restaurant. So I kinda understand these exaggerated descriptions people give on food orders.
DiplomjodlerOn the other hand you have the bozos that order extra extra spicy and then whine that they can’t eat it. That’s likely something everyone who works in an Asian restaurant has experienced multiple times.
I have a good Sichuan place near me. Sichuan heat can sneak up on you, so people who pull this are liable to be leaving in an ambulance. Makes it difficult for me to get the authentic experience.
Reminds me of a time me and a coworker stopped for Indian food at a place neither had been before and he said he wanted a number 7. He’s Korean so the server didn’t blink , I said 1 please.
When the server walked away I was like man what the hell are you doing a fucking 7 !?, he said I like spicy food , I said ok sorry I mentioned it.
He needed a towel to dry his face , his nose had sweat beads dripping off it. He ate the whole dish , said it was way too hot. And he should have ordered a 2 or 3.
I don’t play around in those places, store baught hot sauce is as far as I go and I like it just fine , got nothing to prove. I’ve tried sauces so hot my ears were ringing and I don’t like that jazz
There’s a Mexican restaurant by me where they keep the good hot sauce in the back.
You can ask for it.
You can purchase it.
They do not keep it on the table.
The guy will however come up to you all sketchy like and ask if you like spicy, then bring you a ramekin for your food and let you know you can take a jar home.
10/10
HossenfefferWhen I was in the US with another Brit buddy we went out for a curry (Gaylord Chicago IIRC) and each ordered a vindaloo. The head waiter was dispatched to our table to warn us this might be too spicy. When we told him we were British he nodded, smiled, and said “I understand, I’ll let the kitchen know.”
It was still a bit on the mild side for a BIR vindaloo.
socsaThe fact is that even with just a bit of intentional spice “training” you can get your tolerance into the million scoville range, far beyond what your average Indian place can do to their vindaloo unless they are specializing in spicy food and have ghost peppers available.
WildmimicYou can lose that training too, ask me how i know. I had a phase of about 2 years where everything had to be spicy, in the end my sister couldn’t eat from my plate anymore. Somehow I stopped eating spicy food - after a few months without training i made the mistake of cooking something spicy without reducing the intensity. Well, then i knew how my sister felt.
SlippiHUDI once had to leave a negative review at the Thai place I go for lunch pretty regularly, because they got a new hostess and she kept trying to save me from my hubris multiple weeks in a row.
The owners finally had a conversation with her and now I get my Pad Thai at the appropriate spice level. I gave edited the review to 5 stars afterwords.
It’s funny that this meme, and now you, mention spicy Pad Thai, as that was always one of the Thai dishes that I didn’t think work as well with higher spice levels. I usually lean towards red or pannang curry when I want spicy Thai.
Being the only spice tolerant person in my family kind of sucks. Whenever I try to get a family member to try something new, the first question they ask is whether it’s spicy. I literally cannot even detect mild heat anymore and have several times accidentally given the okay on things they then couldn’t finish.
God I feel this. My mother told me once to be careful not to make my eggs too spicy by adding too much black pepper.
I’ve made food that I thought was literally flavorless and been told it was too spicy to finish. So, now when I cook for family I actually just don’t add any seasonings and I point them to the cabinet. “You’re not gonna like most of what you find in there, but there’s at least some butchers blend you should be able to handle”
Worse, I’ve noticed that a lot of the hotter stuff doesn’t even have a good flavor.
For regular jarred Mexican salsa, I like Herndez. The hot isn’t very hot and it would be completely fine for me with chips or whatever, but the flavor of the medium is so much better. I don’t really get it.
MinnesotaGoddamthe la victoria green hot was the best, but i don’t know what happened to it. haven’t been able to find it since covid.
oh totally. i think they figure people are too burned so they can’t taste anything and just load up on arbols and vinegar
hansoloI used to live in West Africa, where everything is spicy. Grilled scotch bonnet peppers are a garnish in restaurants. It’s sink or swim. Thai restaurants make their “mild” Thai mild, swimming in peppers.
At some point you cross a point of tolerance where the lovely flavors of hot peppers open up to you. Orange bonnets and habaneros are wonderfully delicious. Zingy with a fruity chili flavor that is unlike other milder peppers. 10/10 my favorite. But only something one can taste once you learn to tolerate capsicum exposure.
so like in austin texas there used to be (and probably still is, just i don’t live there anymore) this group called the Nuclear Taco Club. we’d meet once a month and eat ghost pepper tacos. there was a lot of sour crema and milk there.
AniviaI don’t put it on my breakfast cereal, but I do use smoked ground up scorpion pepper as a seasoning to put on pretty much anything that isn’t supposed to taste sweet. I know a guy, so I buy it by the mason jar.
do you grow your own or have a supplier? i would like to purchase said smoked ground up scorpion pepper seasoning please
I know many people don’t have a yard or time to do so, but they aren’t too hard to grow, even in Minnesota, if you’re willing to do it yourself. A 10 gallon pot can grow more than enough to last a year, though I find that 7-pot peppers tend to produce more pods for some reason.
I don’t grow my own. I’ve tried a couple times and failed. When I need more, I ask my friend to go get it from his friend, who grows and smokes and grinds it. I’ve never actually met the guy.
gotcha. i have so many questions, like “why smoke it? is it not earthy enough? which wood”
Don’t have a lot of answers for you. I do a lot of cooking, so I’d guess the answer to why is that it adds a nice smoke flavor, like how you can buy smoked paprika, and that it would make for a fairly quick and easy drying process so it can be ground up. By the taste, I’d guess he just uses oak. If I got to pick, I’d say apple would be nice.
oh good. i use apple, grey oak and peach
This is what you have to say to get mild spice in Japan.
I’ve noticed at the last two places I’ve gotten wasabi with my meal from that the wasabi is weak. I remember in the past, if I ate some wasabi directly, I’d feel the place it first hit my tongue for like 20 seconds after. The last two times, I didn’t detect any spice at all, even eating it directly.
Hope this is just a local trend and you’re talking about weak spicy mayo or something.
I’m not talking about wasabi, wasabi is its own thing.
I’d like spicy better if the burn didn’t linger. Wasabi, I love. It blasts through you, burning away all mucous in your sinuses and then it’s gone. A little dry mouth, so you need a bite of ginger and then another blast of wasabi.
You should try dona sauce. Looks creamy but it’s just roasted jalapenos emulsified in oil, usually olive oil. Doesn’t leave as fast but the roasting and oil tempers the trailing heat quite a bit.
agamemnonymousMy mouth can handle whatever spice you give me, although honestly at a certain point the flavor is literally just spice, which is pretty boring.
The other end is what moderates my spice intake.
Pad Thai is not a traditionally spicy dish, though. It’s a mild street food, so you have to smother it in toppers to get it hot. You’re way better off ordering a spicy curry and asking for a side of chili oil to raise the heat.
Drunken noodles all the way. I was incredibly disappointed trying a new thai place when the drunken noodles were weaker than your average pad thai. I mean I know I’m white but if you’re gonna make it that weak at least ask me a spice level so I can say medium or something.
Ask them for a spice tray. Most Thai places will have chili oil, dried peppers, pickled Thai chiles, picked jalapeños, homemade sriracha paste, curry powder, etc. you can use as condiments.
To some people, chili oil may as well be ketchup. Thai food uses birds eye chili peppers for heat. Hotter than jalapenos by a lot and a bit hotter than serrano peppers, but generally about half as hot as a habanero and much less hot than scorpion, ghost, reapers, and a few other variants. I can eat all the bird peppers I want on my food. For real heat I add hotter stuff.
Sure, but if your tolerance is that high then you need to have realistic expectations going to a Thai restaurant. Asking them to “make me cry” like OP did just means the chef is going to throw a few extra peppers in the dish. Every once in a while you’ll get a place that punishes you by throwing like 30 peppers in it and then it’ll taste kind of bitter, but the heat reaches a plateau before that.
Most of the time people ask for that and then complain it’s not hot enough because the Thai restaurant is trying to make traditional dishes with traditional heat, not the latest superhot hybrid.
The chili oil adds quite a bit of flavor and is a nice neutral oil that can enhance anything. If you learn how to make it at home you can infuse it with superhots, but if you get it from the restaurant you’ll get what they have. Some are certainly hotter than others, and I’ve had chili oil that makes me hiccup despite growing superhots at home.
The problem is that most Thai places look at someone who asks for Thai hot extra extra spicy and still judges you from a typical European decent consideration of what really hot is, as opposed to someone who likes food hotter than what most southern Thai people like their food. If I’m going to a Thai place that they don’t know me at from several visits, I’ll never get a meal as spicy as I’d like after them, because they think I’ll complain, even after asking for it.
Agreed on all counts, but they are excellent choices for growing your own peppers as they produce so many more peppers, and produce or longer, than super hots. I always include at least one of those plants in my garden every year in addition to the super hots.
Thai food in Thailand is nowhere near as spicy as “Thai Spicy” or even “Hot” Thai food in the states, in my experience. Some places I went it approaches or slightly exceeds “Hot”, but on the whole I think the spiciness of Thai food is way overblown.
That’s how I feel about spicy food in Texas. “Texas Spicy Chili” anywhere else in the US is going to be way hotter than what is generally found in Texas.
I usually think Texas anything just means a fuck ton of sugar has been added.
BoxOfFeetI don’t travel, or do anything. No passport, never been on a plane. Thailand is the one place I want to go, and eat my way from one end to the other.
Maybe sometime in the future when the US sucks less (hopefully). I’m too ashamed to be from here right now to travel abroad.
If that’s what’s holding you back, don’t worry. Thai people are very chill and kind on the whole. Also the economy is very dependent on tourism, so dealing with westerners is part of that. And, the US has not fucked Thailand over anywhere near as much as the surrounding countries (vietnam & cambodia, mostly, but even those folks are extremely gracious). People will appreciate you if you are kind, polite, and try to follow local customs.
That’s nice and I’ll keep it in mind. For now I’m avoiding airports in my own country.
You’ll find yourself explaining whats wrong with Trump more often than explaining that you don’t support America and Americans have exactly zero influence on its actions; when I was there last year, Vietnamese liked him because the only thing they knew about him was the tarriffs on China and the Chinese often thought MAGA just meant develop America, the way China developed itself.