in Thailand i usually ordered non spicy at all. Just on time i ordered my pat Thai with the tiniest bit of spicy, making very clear they got the point. I couldn’t eat it.
I guess some people don’t make chocolate covered birds eye chili’s for snacks?
I’m intrigued by this.
Once had a 7/10 spice at a thailand resteraunt. Holy shit that was spicy. 10/10 would have killed me
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.
Honestly, learn how to say “spicy” in Thai. That way they dont give you “white people spicy”
the language learning center of my brain is stuck on greek right now. i’ll end up saying something ridiculous
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.
the chef gave me something so spicy it was inedibl
i want to go there
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.
asking you where youre from is hilarious
ive been buying powdered ghost pepper instead of expensive hot sauce. saving tons of money
I don’t like vinegar, and that’s the predominant taste I get from most hot sauces. So, I also buy powdered ghost pepper. It’s super handy, since my family has zero spice tolerance I can just add powder to whatever on my plate/bowl.
My friends and I all grow super hots and make our own dry spices as well. That doesn’t stop me from buying hot sauces though because I enjoy the variety of flavors, but you can use the dry spice to add heat to many dishes that hot sauce would ruin/overpower.
for sure, i still have a bottle or two around, but i rarely every use them anymore since the shaker is so much cheaper, faster, and more able to add heat. like you said, without changing the flavor too much. :)
Not the cuisine to make that joke with.
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.
Monstruos and irregular. My gut is literally built with different organs
man im so jelly. anytime i get more adventurous than salt and maybe a teeny tiny bit of pepper my insides turn to lava and I spend at least a couple hours expelling hot fire from my anus afterwards. :(
I am the physical embodiment of vanilla, at least culinarily speaking lmao
I think this is masochism. Food doesn’t leave any external marks so these people go with food.
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.
I was joking.
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.
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”
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
I like my Pad Thai spicy.
I usually get a 4 out of 5. I was getting a 1.
Maybe I should give it another try even if I have to spice it up myself.
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.
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.
You need to do a Ron Swanson-style “I said I want all of the chilis you have” routine.
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
Herdez roast salsa verde chefs kiss
the 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.
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.
Have you ever heard of “runners high”? You get the same thing about 10 minutes after eating really spicy food
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
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.
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
it’s not that, it’s that i get a tummyache if i don’t eat enough spicy food each day.
opposite of all y’all who get tummyaches if you eat any spicy food i know i’m weird. they have literally tried to study it in a lab.
i had some really fucky gastro stuff happen to me and my surgeon just happened to be plugged into research so i got to be a professional test subject
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.
For sure, for sure. I don’t mean to disparage spice itself. I also judge people who refuse to have spicy food (unless it’s for medical reasons ofc), and the classic bland food fan who thinks black peppercorn is spicy. I guess I just pretty much am judging everyone aside from the Goldilocks zone people who appreciate and value spice but also don’t place it above everything else or turn it into something its not
Sometimes I just want a murder hot soup or entree because it beats the other recreational poisons in terms of long term damage, but I still feel good after.
I enjoy food, but I also like an occasional escape by capsaicin. If that’s ok with you, I mean.
Lol, I mean yeah I get you. Like I said, I can also eat super spicy food. And that’s not the sort of thing you find out by accident. There is a certain pleasure to it, maybe sinus clearing, or the sort of psychological sensation akin to a cold plunge from forcing yourself to endure something difficult. And I love the hottest variety of hot cheetos. And Thai food really does need some decent hest or its just not right. I think the true defining characteristic of a Spicelord isn’t enjoying super spicy food, but being pretentious and weird about it.
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.
It’s not the only thing… just an excuse. I have tons. I have a 3 year old. I don’t have any vacation funds saved. I don’t think my wife would enjoy the food the way I would. I really would like to go someday, maybe for a couple of weeks. Maybe in 5-10 years.
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.
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.
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.
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’ve never liked wasabi, which is strange because I’ve loved hot sauce since I was a child. I’ve since figured out that what I actually like is vinegar and the fact that there’s peppers involved is just a pleasant bonus.
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.
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.
This is what you have to say to get mild spice in Japan.
And you still just get mildly spicy mayonnaise.
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, its weird that we even use the same word to refer to both wasabi and chili peppers.
There’s still sushi places that put absurd amounts of wasabi in the sushi.
Phet…Thai spicy all the way.
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
