Category: Eating Out

My Chinese American husband has all kinds of hot sauce. There’s Cholula (his go-to for all things Mexican), siracha, Chinese chili oil (4 jars), Frank’s red hot sauce (for buffalo wings), gochuchang (Korean hot paste), sambal oelek (Indonesian chili paste?), and even jalapeno olive oil. He grows his own serrano peppers, which I once made the mistake of chopping and seeding without latex gloves. The skin under my fingernails burned for an entire day—despite soaking them in milk.

If it’s white people food with the inevitable weak sauce, Andy adds hot sauce.

Sometimes he overdoes the heat. Back when we were just dance partners, he made spicy Thai tofu curry. The man told me not to eat it, because “it’s too spicy, even for me.” I was appalled that Andy would let home-cooked food go to waste. I gobbled it up and declared it the greatest meal ever, with tears and snot running down my bright red face.

I was not raised on spicy food—not unless you think Hormel chili spicy. I didn’t do spicy until I moved to California. (Back then, “spicy” meant Del Taco’s spicy jack quesadilla.)

I learned more about heat when Andy watched the “Chili Eating” episode of We Are the Champions. It’s a half-fascinating, half-horrifying story about competitive eating involving the Carolina Reaper chili and its Scoville heat scale of 2 million plus (a jalapeño pepper is about 2,500).

Andy wondered what that tasted like. But not quite enough to actually order a pepper that has to be handled like a toxin.

My friend JM also loves spicy food. Whenever we go out for Indian food, she orders the highest spice level. The staff then side-eyes the shit out of her because JM is even whiter than me. I tell them, “I’ll give you ten dollars if you can make her cry.”

Nobody has made her cry yet.

JM was thrilled when a Dave’s Hot Chicken opened up nearby. They specialize in spicy. In fact, they even make you sign a waiver if you order their “Reaper chicken,” which is coated with a rub made from the Carolina Reaper pepper.

JM brought the Reaper chicken home and convinced her super white husband to try it. He took one bite, drank all the milk in the house, and has yet to forgive her for “the unpleasantness.” And JM? She turned on the kitchen faucet and let the water run over her tongue for a very long time.

Dave’s Hot Chicken has a menu option called “Chicken Roulette.” They give you 4 mildly spicy chicken tenders, 5 medium spicy chicken tenders, and 1 Carolina Reaper tender. They don’t tell you which one is which.

I got Chicken Roulette take out for Andy’s birthday meal. (Dinner AND a potential show!) Andy was game. He dumped three tenders on his plate. I carefully sniffed and examined all the tenders. They all smelled the same. I cut a piece off of three different tenders. Our son Dalton did the same, then poured himself 2 glasses of water and a giant mug of milk. He shrugged off our laughter and lectured us: “It’s better to prepare for the worst.”

Andy reported that his tenders were spicy, but not too spicy.

Dalton chowed down. His milk remained untouched. He returned for seconds before I had eaten two bites.

My first two tenders were medium spicy. The third tender? A definite burning sensation. I offered the rest of that piece to Andy. “Tell me what you think of this.”

Andy eyed me warily. But since I wasn’t sweating or teary-eyed, he stuffed the entire piece in his mouth. He chewed, and then said, “OH MY GOD.”

Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he gulped water. Andy then hurried to the refrigerator…only to discover that Dalton had poured the last of the milk. Dalton laughed evilly as Andy ran to the garage fridge for a new carton.

Sweat was pouring down Andy’s face when he returned. He tried in vain to mop it up with his hoodie. Dalton laughed harder and then asked me, “Hey, which tender was that?”

“I have no idea,” I responded. And then laughed at Dalton’s horrified face. My mouth still burned. I ate dill pickle slices as Dalton sniffed at the tenders. He insisted that he could tell which one was the Reaper and cut off bits of other tenders to try.

I scoffed at him. “If I can’t tell by smell, there’s no way you can.”

“MY olfactory cells are young and strong, mother,” Dalton replied. He took a bite, chewed for two seconds, coughed, and then downed his entire mug of milk.

I laughed until Andy dumped two more pieces of chicken on my plate. “Try these, honey.”

The first one was a little spicy. The second one… “It’s BITTER,” I declared. “It’s not just hot, it’s BITTER. Ick. So that’s got to be the Reaper, then. Which one was it?” I ate a French fry.

Andy looked at the pile of nearly identical tenders. “Uh…I don’t remember?”

Readers, if you decide to play chicken roulette, plan ahead. Use paper plates or toothpicks and number each tender, then keep track of which one you ate.

Unless, like us, you want to play multiple games of chicken roulette. Andy and Dalton were so traumatized that they were ready to toss out perfectly good food rather than risk the Reaper a second time.

Just like with Andy’s overly spicy Thai tofu, there was NO WAY I was letting good food go to waste. I cut off and tested a small bite of each remaining chicken tender. Those tenders were consigned to either a “mild” Tupperware container or a “medium” Tupperware.

I got lucky during this process of elimination. The Reaper wound up being the last tender. Dalton suggested I try it, “just to be sure.”

Ha, ha, no. Not after my mouth had finally cooled off (with much less milk or drama than the two males in the house).

Dalton used tongs to put the remaining piece of Reaper chicken in a separate container, adding one piece of mild chicken and one piece of medium chicken.

He plans on offering a “mild, medium, and spicy” chicken sampler to an unsuspecting friend.

God help him.