So, where does mayo fall on that? /s
I’m so white that ghosts consider me pale, but I’ve never eaten food at a restaurant that’s too spicy for me, and it annoys me every time I try a new place and I ask for “level 5 spicy” or whatever they call it on the menu and they’re like “Okay - we start you out with a 2”.
I know what I’m about. I want to burp in 2 hours and have my tongue start burning. Later this evening, I want to regret my life choices on the toilet.
I once went to a restaurant with spice levels “Norse politics, American politics, Mexican politics, Indian politics”
Dunno. American politics are pretty spicy right now.
When I first went to an Indian restaurant, they asked whether we want “European” or “Indian” spice level food. One of us was brave, he ordered Vindaloo, “Indian”. We others stayed “European”. And he huffed, and he puffed, …
I love seeing the variety in the takes on how bad “India hot” spice level is.
My limited anecdotal experience has landed my white ass firmly in the camp of “do not fuck with the flavors of back home.”
My go-to core memory on that one is going out for wings with a group of friends a long time ago. We ordered a half dozen of whatever the place’s ridiculous triple-atomic or equivalent was. I want to say 500,000 scoville and they give you gloves to eat it with. I think the deal was something like White Guy eats one of the wings and Indian Guy eats the rest, after the latter had claimed in a friendly way that they wouldn’t be too hot.
Long story short, Indian Guy eats all available wings and licks his fingers like it’s honey BBQ. He liked them and said yeah they do have some spice. White guy ruined the entire rest of his day and suffered for his hubris!
Most of the rest of us (I think all of us were additional White Guys) tried a tiny little piece of a wing or even just a half drop of the sauce. The spot where that little bit touched my tongue was numb and tingly for the rest of the day, lol.
Some people just shrug off that capsaicin.
Once upon a time, I was traveling in Thailand and went to a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere that mostly served tourists. There were two guys there who thought they could handle spice, so they told the waiter to bring them something spiced for Thai locals. He tried to discourage them, and offered to give them something that was really spicy for westerners, but they insisted that they wanted what locals eat.
When they received their dish, they couldn’t even manage a single bite. I could overhear them, and they were convinced that the waiter was playing a joke on them, so when he came back they asked him to try it to see if it was good, trying to catch him out. The waiter had a few bites, said “yeah, tastes good”, asked if they needed anything else, and when they said no, just went on to help his other customers. The tourists were just gobsmacked.
I know my limits, and decently high for “The West”, but it’s nowhere near the limits of a Thai person who likes spicy food. And, I know enough to know that when I’m on vacation, I want it even less spicy than normal. If I get something ultra spicy at home, I might have to spend some unpleasant time on the toilet. But, at least it’s my own toilet. I really didn’t want to be caught out in some rural Thai toilet or outhouse trying to process something that was too much for me and missing out on enjoying my vacation.
Recently I was invited to a Diwali party by an Indian friend. I am very much a white American, and I don’t eat a ton of Indian food because frankly I don’t like the taste. I was warned profusely that one of the dishes was super spicy, but I like spice so I gave it a go. I was worried it was going to be crazy hot… It literally had some jalapeno in it. It was not spicy at all. They were all looking at me like they couldn’t believe I was eating it because it was so spicy, and some said they couldn’t even eat it. I eat a ton of spicy Mexican food, and frankly this dish didn’t hold a candle to the salsa roja at my local taqueria, so I’m not sure I buy this scale based on my extremely limited experience.
As a millenial brown dude I can definitely see this happening. Basically all the feedback I got growing up was that white (and some Asian) people cannot handle the spice in our food which is why it was often made fun of (along with Mexican food). A lot has changed since then but there is an innate reflex to tell white and some East Asian friends and colleagues to be careful with it and it’s hard to break. No one wants to see another person get ill from their food simply because their digestive tract is not accustomed to it.
It’s very similar to the reflex that makes me stop my toddler from eating anything with spice but then she actually likes it and I’m like oh yeah, that tracks, you’re a mini version of me 😆.
I will say that palates universally have broadened in the past few decades. When I was growing up it wasn’t uncommon to see people (even grown adults) physically recoil, make faces or pinch their noses in the presence of Indian food and a lot of folks have really stepped up their game since then.
Indian spicy is itself a spectrum. People from South India laugh at what north Indians usually call spicy. I can only barely handle south indian spicy food but I can usually handle spicy anything else.
I visited Hyderabad recently and didn’t struggle with any dish that was made for me. I told them to make it spicy as well, and I asked my friends to verify that it actually was spicy.
I think most Americans are just cry babies. Now, the food poisoning did fuck me up, real bad. That was a very quick ‘no I think I go home now’.
I believe they are from the north, so that tracks.
The only time spicy food has really knocked my socks off is particularly spicy ramen.
Indian food gets a 7/10 on the scale, the few dozen times I’ve had as spicy as they’d give me.
I will never forgive the companies that purposefully make jalapenos less spicy. Like they actually grow them to be less spicy just 'cause the specific USians can’t handle it. Fucking insane.
I, on the other hand decided to grow my own jalapeños a few years back. I thought it would be cool to grow scorpion peppers, too.
The scorpion peppers were dehydrated to be added to dishes sparingly to rapidly increase the spice without changing much flavor.
Did you know that scorpion peppers and jalapeños cross-pollinate? Those were some of the hottest jalapeños I have ever had in my life.
5/7 would do again.
While peppers are prolific cross-pollinators, you don’t see the results of that in the original fruit. If you grow a habanero and a jalapeno next to each other, the fruit they produce will be exactly what you would expect from an ordinary jalapeno and an ordinary habanero. If you save the seeds, however, and grow the F1 hybrid it will be a mix of the two parents phenotypes. It won’t look exactly like either parent, and will be some combination of the two in flavor.
If the original fruit you got from the jalapeno was different than you expected it could have been a hybrid itself, or it could have been growing conditions encouraged a spicier flavor.
I remember going to America for the first time ordering Mexican food that was absolutely load with Jalapenos and I was like “oh no, I’m in danger” then I bit into one and it just didn’t do anything??? Was wondering if my mouth has just broken or something lol
Same in Europe; Jalapenos are sour paprikas
That’s not why. It’s because jalapenos are used in a lot of packaged food, and they need a uniform level of spiciness for that food. It’s easier for them to start with a bland pepper then add a specific amount of capcacin to bring up the spice to the required level. If they rely on cultivated jalapenos that are spicy, there’s a range of heat depending on growing conditions, etc.
Oh no, grown stuff is not always exactly the same? Better make everything shit without any taste and make everything artificial.
That explains why I sometimes eat jalapenos and barely feel any spice
They are essentially anaheims now, so annoying.
You can still buy the spicier varieties, though, right? So what’s the problem?
I think there will be a lot of money to be made for someone who can create one thats spicy on the way in but not at all on the way out.
I thought they grew them to have no spice for standardization, then added capsacin so that they were always the same heat level?
Having grown jalapenos myself, it’s an art. Happy plant, happy peppers. Keep the plant watered and healthy, the fruit comes out mild.
I used to regularly go to an awesome
VietnameseThai food cart in a big U.S. city. The first time I ordered drunken noodles, I made the mistake of saying yes when he asked if I wanted it spicy. It took me 45 minutes and a shitload of water to get through it. But the flavor under the spice was excellent, so I wanted to try it again.The next time I went, I ordered it again but asked for “white guy spicy.” The old dude laughed and made one of the best drunken noodle dishes I’ve ever had, with the perfect spice level for me.
i didn’t know what drunken noodles are so i looked it up. but it says it’s a thai dish?
Yup, it’s called Pad Kee Mao in Thai. Vietnam isn’t known for its spicy food (there’s a lot of French influence to their cuisine), whereas Thailand very much is the home of hot food.
Sounds like I made a dumb dumb and it was actually a Thai food cart, not Vietnamese. It’s been over 10 years since I went there, so I think I just cited the wrong country of origin for it.
They had Pad Kee Mao on the menu too, and their drunken noodles were basically the same recipe, just with fettuccine-like noodles instead of the wide egg noodles.
Oh man I did some work in the Berkshires once upon a time, and the company I was working with took me out to lunch at this Malaysian place near their building that they swear by.
They asked, 1-10, how spicy I wanted it. The guys I was with ordered 6 and 10 (the 10 guy was Malaysian, himself). I ordered a 3.
I can tolerate spice. I like spicy foods.
That was the spiciest fucking meal I had in my life. It was so spicy that the next day or two, I couldn’t sit down right. It was just as spicy on the way out as it was on the way in.
It was so damn good though.
Malaysian spice is crazy too. Think I ordered mild and that was wild
I am afraid of the 10 now. That must be like a hot lava geiser.
As fun as it is to make fun of America, there are plenty of countries with way worse spice tolerance. You wouldn’t expect it, as the home of wasabi, but most Japanese people have the tolerance level of a white Midwestern grandma with severe acid reflux.
Wasabi and radishes and mustard have a different chemical mechanism from peppers for their spice. I had a friend who grew up in India, and has basically no regard for capsaicin, over for dinner one night. We had some radishes out of our garden, and some of them were definitely on the hot side so I warned her. She scoffed and bit off half a good sized radish. She was soon downing iced tea to wash it away and said, oh my god, is that what spicy food is like for you? But capsaicin is oil based and doesn’t wash away so easily.
Very true, the two types of “spiciness” are quite different (wasabi is basically a ten-second flavor blast, whereas capsaicin sticks with you and accumulates). It’s way more that just “mouth hot.”
I remember one night, we ordered takeout sushi and got a side of edamame, too.
I wasn’t paying attention and picked up what I thought was a bean that had fallen onto the sushi tray, and just ate it.
It was not a bean.
Mhm. Horse radish
I mean actual wasabi isn’t that “hot”, the majority of what is called wasabi, outside Japan is horseradish which is a lot “hotter”. Wasabi is also eaten in incredibly small amounts to season the food rather than provide a dominant flavour.
Traditional Japanese food has almost no heat at all, short hop to Korea though where they love very spicy food.
Absolutely, true wasabi has a much more delicate flavor, but it still packs way more of a punch than, say, even the spiciest Japanese curry. I was floored by how spicy Korean food was when I first tried it, especially by comparison with Japanese cuisine. Generally speaking, I don’t think Korean and Japanese food have much of an overlap, except maybe in ingredients used and the prevalence of rice- and noodle-based dishes.
We can go milder
- Midwest Mild
- Minnesota Middling Mild
- Wisconsin Wildly Mild
- Indiana Insanely Mild
- Ohio One Mild to rule them all and in the blandness bind them
As an ohioan there’s 2 different spice levels. One for your average milquetoast Midwestern old white people and one for the rest of us who go out of their way to put hot sauce on literally everything
To quote a Minnesotan I know, talking about chili: “I’m going to add some mayo, to give it some zing”
Luckily the twin cities are sanctuary cities and you can get people who aren’t whiter than rice to make food here
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I don’t like water. It’s too spicy.
Did my GERD write this?
Wisconsin, where they ask you how spicy you want your food on a scale from mozzarella to cheddar.
sounds like the uk
Finally a reason for me to consider moving to the Midwest.
Could be even more mild - European Extra Spicy
European spicy is the same as American spicy, and both vary wildly between countries/states. Portugal or Spain have mostly the same range as Texas or Louisiana for example.
I really kicked the hornet’s nest with this 😁
I live in Europe, love the place, but Americans are obsessed with spicy food.
The worlds hottest peppers are bred in America https://puckerbuttpeppercompany.com/
Unless we’re talking about the Midwest US or something, only Asia comes close.
And here I am growing super hots in the midwest like some kind of savage.
And to cap it off, British
Laughs in a good 'nduja calabrese.
Other countries mocking Americans is the closest I can ever get to feeling like a white person: other people are punching up at stereotypes of an extremely damaging entity and, even though I am technically part of that group, I have to recognize this isn’t referring to or about me.
But still, fuck off, yeah? I like my food well spicy! 😠
At this point I feel like the white folks stereotype in the US has shifted to an extreme dichotomy with very little overlap: you’re either a spice head like Sean Evans and pretty much everything up until Da Bomb level (not personally tried that one but extract sauces in general just taste like metallic death with no redeeming flavor qualities) can feel hot and even uncomfortable but it’s not ruining your entire meal or day, and then you’ve still got those who think anything more than black pepper is straight up hellfire.
I don’t understand the people around me. They think things like mild banana peppers or basic Cajun seasoning are too spicy. I go through roughly 30oz of various hot sauces per month, and Franks doesn’t even taste like anything other than sweetness.
I love actually spicy Drunken Chicken from Thai places, where the first bite turns your entire face red and drinking the broth at the end means you might not be able to see for the next few minutes.
Franks isn’t spicy but it is tangy. I like its flavor profile. It makes a great enhancement to mac & cheese.
I used to grow my own habaneros and make my own hot sauces but still couldn’t get anything that was both spicy enough and had a good flavor to it.
It’s interesting that you get tangy from frank’s, all I get is some sort of tasty variation on sweetness. My brain is all sorts of mangled though, so maybe that’s just psychosis talking.
Yeah, I think “sweet” is the weird palate. Frank’s is the base of buffalo wings and no one’s calling buffalo wings “sweet.”
I have travelled to India a few times and the food wasn’t spicer than what I could get here in Kansas.
After some discovery I learned that we use the word spicy differently (although South India Andhra style was a bit hotter).
I was used to using the word spicy to mean the heat level of the food, kinda like a measure of capsaicin. This is how I see Americans use the word.
They were largely using spicy to refer to the volume off spices in a dish, kinda like a measure of “strength of flavor”. This is how I saw various cultures in India use the word.
Those things are often related, but are different in meaningful ways that result in these tropes.
Yup the word hot is used to specify the heat level, spicy just means it uses various spices in it, which could include stuff like cinnamon or cardamom etc which don’t add heat but impart flavor and aroma
That’s a very good point, a lot of spices (and herbs) have strong flavors, even some "hot"ness, but little or no capsaicin. As a person who has a bad reaction to capsaicin (Even a moderate amount causes my hæmorrhoids to hæmorrhage for days. And yet, less applicable to Indian food, I can have all the wasabi/horseradish all day) but loves the other strong flavours of Indian food I would politely ask the waiter or chef to leave out the chilies and go easy on the ginger, but let loose on everything else they want: fenugreek, curry-leaf, asafœtida, aniseed, garlic, cardamom, coriander, black pepper and all the “secret spices” that make up their signature flavour.
And I would try to pick dishes where the base is something else and the chilies are added later, because they aren’t going to want to start from scratch, they can’t exactly un-marinate that chicken.
Mexican food is a little more challenging because chilies are the heart of it and often the first ingredient.
I once asked for my curry to be as spicy as they could go. I stopped the waiter and clarified, not 5 stars. Beyond the star system. Enough red chili powder to make the dish immediately and apparently more sour. He had a look of concern, but acknowledged my need for capsaicin. This was the first time I had ever made myself clear, and landed on the heel of 6 consecutive mild “5 star spice” dishes.
Anyway, they bring out my food a while later. It’s completely unspiced. I’m really hoping, on reflection, that no one else received the masochistic dinner I ordered.
I am surprised you still ordered from them after so many screwed up orders. I give them a couple of tries, but if they can’t make my curry spicy, I will find a place that will.
We all have to live with some sort of bigotry, and mine takes the form of every restaurant underestimating my spice tolerance by an order of magnitude.
They’re very close by and otherwise delicious. I’ll never forgive missed salt. You get 0 do-overs for missed salt. But I’m not going to care too much about a little thing like spiciness. I’d prefer it, but it’s a detail at best, given the world I live in.
I get what you’re saying, but for some reason I just cannot enjoy curry that isn’t spicy. I LOVE both Thai and Indian curry, but only if it is hot. I have luckily found places for both locally that will take my word for it when I ask for food as Thai Hot or Indian Hot.
I once told my delivery Indian food place that they should make it as hot as the cook would eat it
It was one of the few times I barely managed to finish a hot dish
I felt the spiciness the next day when I peed
I was meeting some friends at a Turkish restaurant and the table next to us ordered something so spicy I had to leave. Don’t know what it was or how they ordered it but damn that level of spice should be illegal.
Might just be outgassing due to recent preparation. Hot oil on a spicy dish can produce some intense fumes, even in a relatively mild dish.
I open every door and window when I cook at home, and the food I cook is usually mild. Just a jalapeño
I’m also a baby with spice. Im trying to get better but I used to think pepperoni pizza was too spicy. Now I’m up to the point where I can eat a sandwich with banana peppers on it…
The other week my gf accidently cooked with a can of “medium” rotel instead of “mild” and I couldn’t eat more than a bite.
Would you like to know the trick to developing your tolerance? It’s pretty simple. Just choose your favorite fat and heavily include it in a side. I used to choose butter, until it started killing me.
Cream of leek soup, butter fried quesadillas, sautéed pea vines, just a dish of olive oil with bread. Once it goes beyond your comfort zone, rein it in with your side. Gradually, you’ll get used to it through brief exposure.
Bonus, more varied meals. Fuck, now I really want butter fried okra…
Yeah I also occasionally just push my comfort. In a lot of cases it’s just not a flavor I enjoy. Same with fish, I can eat it but I just don’t like it.
Irony is gf loves fish and spicy stuff. Like well have scrambled eggs in the morning with toast and bacon. Mine will have a small drop of ketchup for dipping. Hers will be coated in Sriracha and hot sauce.
Hmm, are you a fan of sour? I adore it, which led me to go prefer spicy foods. Most pepper powders and pastes are pretty acidic, which isn’t everyone’s bag.
I do a lot of pasta, a lot of sandwiches, I like some sour like saurkraut and pickles. I like onions and garlic. Most meat I eat is either chicken in some sauce(like alfrado or teriyaki or such) sausage with onions and peppers or in like a vodka sauce.
Yes I grew up in an American house with Italian and German influences if you couldn’t tell.
I straight up would have just left and refused to pay.
I was with friends, and we all joked about how I didn’t deserve to have any spice. That I was a spice peasant. That pain is weakness leaving the body, and they saw no weakness to excise. That the kitchen knew better than to let white peoples know that there were spices in the back. Just a whole lot of goofiness.
If the food had been bad, then I would have made a stink. It was still tasty despite the kitchen’s forgetfulness, or the wait staff’s mixup. And the company was good
Mexican restaurants often have a hot sauce rack or varying degrees at the table. (Aside: Mexico is where chilies were first cultivated) No worry about spicing each dish to individual needs, everyone can top off to make how spicy they want. Sometimes see abuelitas pulling their favorite hot sauce out of a hand bag, maybe with a pack of tortillas as well, not paying restaurant prices for tortillas.
Can ask for chilies, chilie paste and chili oil at many Asian restaurants in case need to top off spicyness. Works best when eating family style.
In my experience, mexican restaurants don’t have particularly spicy sauces available. They can prepare food quite spicy, but they almost never have good sauces. The local Mexican place I go too has the most basic of sauces so I just bring my own because their food is excellent, it just needs more spice.
