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One way to get the point across
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
I 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 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.
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.
An ambulance because the food was too spicy? That is one expensive dinner
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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
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.
The 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.
You 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.
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.
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I 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.
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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.
oh totally. i think they figure people are too burned so they can't taste anything and just load up on arbols and vinegar. we got a new carneceria last year and they have the best deli salsas so we've just been eating those lately
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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.
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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.
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7.5MB snapshot of a receipt, fucking high fidelity meme.
Hilarious to have that for what is practically a monochrome dot-matrix printout.
Spread across several fediverse instances, so this meme is potentially wasting hundreds of MBs
AFAIK media files aren't synced between instances, they always point to the original instance
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.
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).
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.
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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 mean it's like getting a taste for bitter things - once you are used to it, the flavor is more than just "spice." I have four different bottles of hot sauce over 1M scoville, and I can easily tell them apart by taste and smell. It opens up an entirely new realm of flavor profiles once you can tolerate the spice and taste what comes with it.
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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.
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. Also the economy is very dependent on tourism, so dealing with westerners is part of that - it's something people are used to for better and for worse. 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.
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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'm "macho" and say all this shit but like, for good reason. i get a tummyache if i don't have like 20,000 capsaicans a day
Serious question. How are your shits? Every time I start to build my tolerance, I hit a point where I’m paying for it on the back end and I have to scale back.
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This is what you have to say to get mild spice in Japan.
And you still just get mildly spicy mayonnaise.
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dude, last time i went to the thai place, this was the instruction i gave them.
they gave me white grandma mild. i'm never going back. i eat ghost peppers raw.
Happened to me at an Indian restaurant. Owner asked me where I was from then told me she was giving me medium. They’re out of business now.
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ive been buying powdered ghost pepper instead of expensive hot sauce. saving tons of money
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I asked my local thai restaurant to "make it a little spicier than normal" because their normal is white suburban spicy and the chef gave me something so spicy it was inedible.
Like... Fuck you, you arent the only Thai restaraunt in town.
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I guess some people don't make chocolate covered birds eye chili's for snacks?
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This is the most the most fucking badass phrase i have ever seen.
Not the cuisine to make that joke with.
Once had a 7/10 spice at a thailand resteraunt. Holy shit that was spicy. 10/10 would have killed me
This could be me.
As a person that cannot handle even mild Thai food, I wonder if this person actually has any feeling in their mouth
Phet...Thai spicy all the way.
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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