White Americans: mayonnaise is too spicy
Also white Americans: yeah the Carolina Butthole Annihilator goes well with pretty much everything
That reminds me of an anecdote.
When I lived in Utah many years ago, we regularly had the visit of two colleagues from our London office. They would come and stay for a few days to work with us, and of course we entertained them in the evening.
One evening, we all decided to go for a curry. So we went to some Indian restaurant in Provo, UT if memory serves.
The waiters arrived - real Indians in full fake Raj regalia, as per the restaurant's theme - and took our orders.
Then they asked how spicy. The two Brits looked at each other and said in a low voice "Well, it's Utah, everything is bland here, so we'd better overdo it on the spiciness to get something halfway as spicy as a London curry."
So they announced "Nuclear."
"Are you sure?" the waiters said
"Yeah yeah. Nuclear!"
"Okay...."
15 minutes later, the waiters came back with our orders. Then instead of leaving, they turned and faced the two Brits and simply stood there with a total lack of expression on their faces.
The two went "Uh oh..."
It was the hottest curry they had ever had. They tried to put on a good show for the impassible waiters looking at them, but they quickly turned red and sweaty, and they had trouble not looking like they were panicking when reaching for the water.
We were pissing ourselves laughing 🙂
I have essentially the same story, except it's two Americans visiting Bradford.
They knew what they signed up for.
Australian chiming in.
My favourite Indian restaurant was this little hole in the wall place (for the first three years of operation, they upgraded when the word got out). The first time I went I ordered a Vindaloo, the lovely waitress/chef that took my order asked how spicy. I was a fool and said, I like spicy food, how about a 6 out of 10. I actually made it 3/4 of the way through but the owner/other chef came out to check on me, I think because he was worried I was about to combust. It was astounding, easily the best Vindaloo I have ever eaten.
The next time I went in I ordered a white guy 4, it honestly was still fantastic, but not as good. The owner came out to say hi, asked what I had ordered this time, and he said "Ah yes we make that without any chilli.", never been sure how I should take that. For a while I was hoping to gradually increase my tolerance but I think I am topping out at white guy 9.
Is extra mild just tomato?
yes.
Isn't the human palette interesting. People enjoy the strangest flavors sometimes while others don't.
Kids love the sourest of candies, but won't eat cooked onions or red things. Adults by in large, don't like the same level of sour that children enjoy. But adults enjoy onions raw and often hot chili peppers. I'm fine with strong levels of heat in foods. But I see no reason to use insane levels of heat to try and prove how manly someone might be. I want to taste all the ingredients in the dish, not just one thing. Like Thanos and Buddhist monks, I strive for balance in all things flavor.
I enjoy flavors that most here would run screaming from. I love strong vinegary flavors. I enjoy oaky, tannic bourbons and teas. The iron and mineral flavors of organ meats. And I have noticed lately that I very much enjoy that taste of black pepper, like stupid amounts of it. I even found a small enjoyment of cranberries as I get older. But it's still all about the balance.
I'm much the same on most of this, but I very much still have a sweet tooth. The things I crave, my SO says are "too sweet".
And it's not that nothing is "too sweet" for me, or too sour, in that special way that candies can be sour... There's definitely stuff I've eaten that is too sweet (for me).... I just seem to have a much higher tolerance for it.
Though, I'm not a fan of organ meats. To be fair, I haven't had any recently enough to check if that's still the case.
But pepper is a bit of an addiction for me. I put that shit on just about everything... In quantities that make my SO get visibly uncomfortable.
British people happily eat hot curries so maybe extra mild is for grans or something. Even the mild salsa has almost zero heat on it.
I'm British and consider myself something of a little bitch when it comes to curries. Madras is as far as I can go, vindaloo is over the line. I enjoy eating it but the older I'm getting, the worse the consequences in my guts.
That's the real problem. I love hot spicy food, but I can't deal with the consequences.
Sometimes if I can stay home alone the day after, I'll eat something extra hot and nurse the wounds in private.
The UK is actually generally fine with spicy food, but my relatives in Poland could barely handle mildly spicy food, so yeah
A. Yes, there are definitely people here in the UK who can't handle anything spicier than gravy.
B. They're in the minority.
C. I refuse to believe you don't know someone like that, no matter where you're from.
That is so funny. I do have an ex mother out-law who cannot eat onion because she says it's too spicy. She is somehow still a good cook.
I really like spicy food. Don't need everything to be spicy but I like the spicy stuff to be very spicy.
There are people who can’t handle spice - in Oz every curry house and pub serves Butter Chicken, which is somehow even milder than Tikka Massala, and even Madras often has cream in it. On the other hand curry houses in Bradford do tinderloo for when vindaloo just isn’t hot enough, which is just daft as a rogan josh is already decently spicy there.
My scotch-bonnet-munching brother took one look at this and nearly laughed his ring of fire clear off his seat.
I'd be quite surprised. The USA and Aus have quite a bit of spicy influence. India for UK, Thai for aus...sure many people don't like spicy food but most do.
I loved in UK for a bit and remember being quite surprised that fàst food, like burger king, had proper spicy food.
I swear there's probably more Indian restaurants in the UK than there is in India. Where I suppose they are just called restaurants.
I legitimately can't tell the difference between their mildest and hottest. It's like 0.3% vs. 0.4% hot.
I find this to be the case for most "spicy" things targeting a western market. Firehouse Subs has a hot sauce bar where they rate the spiciness from 1 to 10. Normally I don't bother with it because the ones at the higher end tend to either be some spicy vinegar variation (ugh no thx), or pineapple based, which I'm usually not in the mood for.
Last time they had an 8 that wasn't either of those so I asked them to add a line to my sub as they made it.
It's like their 10 was targeted at jalapeno spiciness, maybe cayenne. The 8 did add some heat, but it was where I'd call it a medium, and a mild one at that.
Should use a logarithmic scale I guess. Just frustrating that spicy stuff always seems to be marketed for people who don't really like spice. The less generous side of me thinks it has to do with people wanting to act tough but are actually whiny losers who thinks it's the seller's fault they can't handle the heat they wanted to show off handling.
True, I suspect that the lack of properly spicy options from major/national food establishments has to do with fear of litigation, or risk management for customers who want to be macho but can't eat the food and ultimately request refunds. Taco Bell had previously come out with a ghost pepper sauce that, while not "hot" compared to the actual pepper, it did have a noticeable heat profile compared to, say, "fire" which IMHO has good flavor but has only a slightly noticeable heat profile at best.
And then there's Denmark (iirc) that outright banned some of the Buldak ramen flavours for being too spicy. The 2x spicy chicken is pretty spicy, like "I'm going to power through this to not waste any food" spicy, but I lost respect for Denmark's leadership when I saw that.
Btw, at the risk of making it even harder to find, Buldak's spicy curry chicken flavour is amazing. The cheese one is decent, too.
I fear my mum would find mild too spicy lol
You can tell an American made this meme.
Its weird. Australians are badasses. Why can't they eat like badasses?
Am aussie and will say there are definately the 'pepper is hot' people but thee is also a healthy love of spice, we have a very multicultural food pallette here with a lot of asian influence in particular (thai, chinese, japanese, indian, etc). I like to put chilli sauce on EVERYTHING, i dont think there is a food i havent tried without chilli.
The normal one isn't even spicy, my 3 year old can eat it, and could when she was 2.
That said, the Sainsbury's own fajita kit is superior.
Better yet, make you own fajita seasoning and use non UPF wraps.
My mother has complained that saffron is too spicy. Yes we are melanin deprived why do you ask?
she might have an allergic reaction to it, same as people who describe kiwi fruit as spicy
I love spicy food, but my mum can't even handle black pepper. Lol. Lmao even
I can only imagine that it's just blander because "mild" here is pretty much spiceless. Hot is baseline mild spice. Extra spicy is what I think of as being spicy, and then everything above that is if you want the burn but none of the flavor.
I've lived in Britain and Australia and I've never seen this, and both places have good spicy food so I assume they didn't sell well.
Spice ratings annoy me so much! I can eat one meal called flaming hot and it's cooler than another that is warm or sometimes even mild.
Please don't post ads.
A casual place for banter and anything that doesn't fit in anywhere else.
Have chat and a natter. Talk about anything and everything that's not political!
Keep it casual.
Here:
Elsewhere:
