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In my experience non-westerners tend to underestimate the level of spiciness that westerners can handle (particularly westerners who are culinarily adventurous)

• lenocinor 8y ago
  This is true for me too, although I will say that Indian and Thai places are at least the most likely to take me seriously when I beg them to add spice.
• mike-cardwell 8y ago
  Probably one of the least spicy curries I've ever had was at an Indian wedding. They put all the white people on a big table together and I'm thinking they gave us a different dish to everyone else. They even came over and asked if it was too spicy.
• spunker540 8y ago
  It seems many cultures think their culture is the spiciest! I've heard similar boasts from friends of mine who are Mexican, Chinese, Korean, and Indian among others.
  • vram22 8y ago
    I've been reading about cuisines and it seems that Korean can be pretty spicy. Not got a chance to try it, except a dish or two (bibimbap, IIRC, and that was not hot). I like the fact that they use a fair amount of sesame seeds and sesame oil, based on what I've read. Got to try it more some day.
    • MPSimmons 8y ago
      I've had some spicy kimchee before, and that was really good.
      • vram22 8y ago
        Oh yes, I forgot about kimchee. I had it at the same place where I had the bibimbap. It is good alright. And recently I read up in Wikipedia and other sites on how they make it. Very interesting. There are many different varieties. They store them to ferment in large jars which are made of earthenware or ceramic or something like that. Traditionally, some kinds of pickles in South India (e.g. green mango pickle) are made in similar looking jars, but not as large.
    • learc83 8y ago
      Find a good Korean fried chicken place. Most of them will have a pretty spicy option.
      • vram22 8y ago
        I'm not in a place where I can try that, right now. Let's see, later.
• monocasa 8y ago
  Seriously, I've been to an Indian restraunt where I've ordered something spicy, and the server asks "are you sure". After responding yes, he asked "are you really sure". This whole thing goes on a third time before he finally goes back into the kitchen. About five minutes later his manager comes out "so I heard you ordered it spicy, now I'm not sure you know what that means". I went to school in New Mexico, we used to throw a little ground capsaicin crystals into the green chile. I can handle whatever the health department will let them put in their damn vindaloo.
  • learc83 8y ago
    Had the exact same thing happen a few months ago at an Indian restaurant. The server just flat out refused to let me order bullet naan. I had to insist 3 times before he gave in. Unless you're stuffing those things with Carolina Reapers, I can handle it (even if you are, I still probably want to try it :) Another time I grabbed a bottle of the house hot sauce at a Jamaican restaurant, and the older lady behind the counter actually laughed at me and told me it was too hot. When I tried it, it was about the level of a medium hot wing sauce. I could have drank the whole bottle and not even asked for water.
    • magic_beans 8y ago
      People only know what they have experienced. You have to just forgive.
      • learc83 8y ago
        That's good advice for any situation.
  • jschwartzi 8y ago
    That is the part where I tell them I buy cumin and chili powder by the pound and that I know turmeric is a root and cinnamon is tree bark.
  • ghaff 8y ago
    >I went to school in New Mexico I generally think of myself as liking spicy food. I tend to favor Szechuan Chinese and I lived in New Orleans for a few years. When I was in the Santa Fe area last summer, I came to the realization after the first night's dinner that I really needed to order the Hatch chile [corrected] sauce on the side or it was going to be completely overwhelming.
• js2 8y ago
  A bunch of us Westerner looking types went to a Thai restaurant in Mountain View. This was many years ago and I don't recall the restaurant. We ordered some shared dish and were asked how spicy we wanted it, 1-10. We said 10. The whole "are you sure?" thing a few times. They brought the dish out. We said "this really isn't 10 spicy." The server said, "next time say you want it 10 on the Thai scale". Sigh. I live in NC now. There's an ice cream place here that has you sign a release form before they'll let you try their "Cold Sweat"[0] made with habanaro, ghost pepper oil, etc, ice cream. I tried it. It was pretty amazingly hot, but while eating it I noticed they had a flavor called "Exit Wound." I asked what it was. "Oh, that's even hotter." Didn't try it... the Cold Sweat was really hot. There's something wrong with an America where the spiciest food I can get is ice cream. :-) [0] Cheesy food network video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8oy_zYRTZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8oy_zYRTZ0
  • tptacek 8y ago
    I think this may be a thing with Thai restaurants in general; it's not just spiciness but also level of fish sauce and even the way the dish is prepared. There's a thing in Chicago about "secret menu" Thai restaurants, which are often written in Thai language (food nerds in Chicago have translated and published them). It might be possible to order things "Thai style" in any good Thai restaurant and get a different, better dish.
    • cbhl 8y ago
      Anecdote: Had a (caucasian) friend who spent a four-month co-op term as a student in India, and when they came back they also had to insist to the local Indian restaurants "yes, I want it extra spicy, like you would serve to an Indian person". (Like, I realize this is frustrating, but how is the waiter going to know -- from your appearance -- that you spent four months eating Indian food in India?)
      • magic_beans 8y ago
        Several of my colleagues find buffalo wing sauce to be unbearably spicy... Most white people in the US aren’t as adventurous as those on HN.
• awad 8y ago
  I’d take that to the extreme and say that many cultures view their cuisine as the ultimate in spiciness while assuming others don’t come close. My anecdote is three South Asian/Indian men being refused the “spiciest” option at a Sichuan restaurant in Palo Alto. Of course, we took this as a challenge and definitely could see why some people might not enjoy it but it wasn’t exactly sign-a-waiver level spice.
• tathougies 8y ago
  Also, lots of Indians find Indian food spicy. My mom and aunts and brother are spice nuts. My grandmother will literally eat raw chilis, but my dad, my uncle, myself, and my grandfather, when he was alive, aren't super into spicy food. My uncle turns read and gets sweaty whenever he eats my mother's food, and my dad and i cope by consuming copious amounts of yogurt. Like, years and years of practice have made me able to ignore the pain and eat what my mother cooks when we visit, but that's not to say I'm a fan of the spice. My wife often asks how I handle my mother's spice, and the answer is -- I ate it as a hungry teenage boy when I was too hungry to stop for water, so I just grit my teeth and power through.
  • void_starer 8y ago
    Mor milagai with curd rice is a great way to acquire a taste for chili. From there you can seamlessly move on to raw chilis :)
    • tathougies 8y ago
      It's really not a question of not having a taste for it, or not being able to develop it. I'm 100% certain I could develop it, as my grandmother has -- due to seemingly inherent interest -- consumed ever spicier dishes. My father, uncle, and I have no interest in developing our taste buds to consume ever spicier foods in the way my mother's family does. I simply am happy to eat whatever. So many things taste good, there is no reason to eat incredibly spicy food. That being said, half of my spice tolerance (which is incredibly incredibly high) is due to being forced to consume it by my mother.
  • davchana 8y ago
    I used to have a roommate who used to cook a kilo of uncut green chillies in a pan; adding crushed red chillies & other spices. Then he would eat it with Roti & pickle. I, for one, can not eat chopped green chillies as a spice in a dish unless it is fried well in Tadka to kill its hotness.
• deleted 8y ago
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• chrischen 8y ago
  The hottest generally available hot sauces are the ones available at McDonald's, PopEyes, KFC, Taco Bell in the US... In fact, the same stores in Asia don't even offer hot sauces (usually some sweet and sour sauce or just ketchup).
• setr 8y ago
  I think it has more to do with how the westeners behave when things are too spicy; I've had a russian girl break down crying from a mildly spicy dish (lost half a gallon of milk and a ton of sugar for that one...), and while others are less extreme, whenever they can't handle their spice, they'll surely let you know it. I know maybe 2 people who both can't handle a high level of spices, and will behave themselves when its too hot. Personally, I find worst-case behavior rude, offensive and downright childish; and more annoyingly, it's generally acceptable behavior. It's sufficiently annoying to stop me from serving spicy foods by default, if its to a non-asian. And worst of all, they always think they can handle a decent level of spices, so theres no warning before they start huffing and dying at the table. I imagine most restaurants aren't as annoyed by it as I am, but I'm pretty sure its primarily that worst-case behavior that stops them from serving properly spicy food to westeners. At least with an indian, if they can't handle their spices, they'll drink their water and shut the hell up. No one enjoys seeing someone huffing and puffing at the dinner table
  • learc83 8y ago
    Your experience is not universal or even typical. I have never seen anything like this in the thousands of times I've eaten spicy foods with hundreds of family members, friends, and business associates. I have literally never seen someone insist that they can handle spicy food, and then start behaving like a child. In my experience, they try to hide it because they are embarrassed they can't handle it. The only thing that even came close was someone who was challenged to do a shot of Carolina Reaper sauce and he started hiccuping then had to excuse himself to go to the bathroom.
• asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  Hottest thing I've ever tasted was undiluted The Man sauce from Dixie's BBQ [1]. Years ago when I interned at Microsoft, they had the interns try the sauce, since we were all from out of town. Whoever had the most would get tickets for the Seahawks game the next evening. I figured I'd like it, because at the time I was super into hot foods. At least, I was by my own benighted standards. But my adviser told me to take the smallest amount I could, on a toothpick. I said fine, and boy were they right. It didn't feel hot. It felt like I was cutting my tongue with a knife. It only started feeling hot as an inferno after it had spread out through my mouth. One of the other guys took a spoonful and put it on a bun and ate it in one bite. Then he proceeded to guzzle several cups of milk, before retiring later to the WC. He won the tickets, but apparently was unable to go because he was still feeling digestively sensitive the next day. These days I don't really fuck around with super hot food any more. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie%27s_BBQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie%27s_BBQ
• slededit 8y ago
  I was at a restaurant with my Indian friends, we all ordered the same dish and spiciness however my food came from a different container...
• tluyben2 8y ago
  > In my experience non-westerners tend to underestimate the level of spiciness that westerners can handle As someone who owned a restaurant; that is not it most likely. The problem is that people say ‘super spicy!!!’ (or bloody if it is a steak) and then send it back because they find it inedible. And you do not want to cause a scene nor can you bite back too hard, so you just replace it with bland and overcooked. It is a shame but many places just want to prevent that issue.
• GFischer 8y ago
  If by "westerner" you mean U.S. American or Mexican, you might be right. However, here down in South America, we can't handle spicy at all (our food is considered bland by people from spicy countries). I almost died eating Mexican food that was rated a 3 on the 1 to 10 scale.