• My father used to be all macho and say this kind of shit when we’d visit Mexican restaurants as a kid. Once place decided to teach him a lesson and honestly everyone involved thought it was hilarious including my father. And yes, they delivered on making him regret it.

    • I 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.

    • I think this is masochism. Food doesn’t leave any external marks so these people go with food.

      • 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.

      • I do lots of very spicy food. I think my tongue has literally been damaged over time by all the heat, 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 to taste anything.

        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.

        • I 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 edited the review to 5 stars afterwords.

        • They do that to me nearly all the time too, especially with to go orders. When eating in person, I just always ask them to bring the spice tray out when ordering my food, that seems to sometimes get the point across.

        • On 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.

        • When 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.

        • You need to do a Ron Swanson-style “I said I want all of the chilis you have” routine.

        • 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.

          Lots of folks take the bait then struggle in their booth. Dinner and entertainment.

          10/10

  • 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.

    • 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.

    • 6 hours

      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.

  • 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.

    In my experience the spiciness levels are 1, 2, and 3 meaning 1 - 3 dried or fresh birdseye (or similar) red chilis. It’s pretty standardized and 3 is a hot but still pleasant level of spiciness. Thai people aren’t competing to see who can light their asshole on fire, they just want good food.

    • Yeah I’m convinced that Spicelords are just sad literally tasteless people who can’t enjoy food on a culinary level as much as they can on a competitive level. Anyone who likes it so spicy that you’re mostly tasting spice, I’m not impressed bro. I can eat like that too. I just choose not to because I have actual taste. Don’t say this “ohhh but I’m used to it so I taste the flavor too” no you don’t, you taste a sad mangled version of the flavor through the spice. How many professional taste testers or culinary geniuses or famous chefs are scarfing down 5000 billion Scoville Ancient Ghost of The Demon King Peppers? Oh right, none of them. Fuck

    • I think something that complicates it is that spice tolerance increases as you eat more spicy things. Some people experience that 1 the same as others feel the 3 and vice versa.

      If Thailand is as used to tourists as other comments have said, then it wouldn’t surprise me if they do something similar to western restaurants with spice: over exagerate how spicy everything is so that tough guys can ask for something that will make them look tough without risking the staff needing to deal with some of them crying about it being too spicy (and maybe also feeling like they need to prove their toughness some other way).

      So it wouldn’t surprise me if the home cooking experience is more in line with what people would expect of Thai cuisine. And not because they want to blast their tastebuds and assholes, but because their tolerance is high from eating spicy food their whole lives and that’s how much they need to get to a “pleasantly hot” level.

    • The spicy things I enjoy are Sriacha, Doritos dynamite Limon, Taco Bell mild but just for the flavor it’s not really spicy at all. Some people would probably call me a bitch for not liking it super hot. I actually like Frank’s red hot because it reminds me of the shitty hot sauce from grade school and it gives me nostalgia.

      My biggest annoyance with spicy food is that I want the experience to stop when I finish eating. People say oh drink milk or whatever but that simply doesn’t work well.

    • 2 hours

      I 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 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’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.

    • My 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.

    • I don’t have much tolerance for capsaicin, but I’m all about the isothiocyanate (the pungent compound in wasabi/horseradish/Chinese mustard/etc., and yes I had to look it up for this comment).

    • You should try dona sauce. 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.

    • 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.

  • This is the most the most fucking badass phrase i have ever seen.

  • As a person that cannot handle even mild Thai food, I wonder if this person actually has any feeling in their mouth