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Did you pause to think about why you were asked that series of questions so often? Your experience suggests that the case of a guest overestimating their own to

Did you pause to think about why you were asked that series of questions so often? Your experience suggests that the case of a guest overestimating their own tolerance is vastly more common than the case of the restaurant underestimating the tolerance of a guest. Edit: my mother, for example, is constantly enamored of the idea of spicy food, orders it "medium" or even "spicy," and then struggles to eat it.

learc83 8y ago
Warning customers that your food is spicy is one thing. Refusing to accept that your culture isn't the only one on the planet that enjoys spicy food is something else entirely. There are white people who don't like spicy food, and there are Indians who don't like spicy food. There are probably more white people who don't like spicy food than Indians who don't (percentage wise). But if you use this heuristic instead of listening to your customers, you'll be wrong more often than you're right. >my mother, for example, is constantly enamored of the idea of spicy food, orders it "medium" or even "spicy," and then struggles to eat it There's really nothing you can do about this unless you plan on just flat out refusing to listen to your customer's stated preferences.
- pen2l 8y ago
  Roughly 10 years ago, I briefly worked as a waiter in an Indian restaurant in the midwest. Easily, more than 90% of the white people who wanted things "spicy" on the Indian spicy scale could _not_ handle it. So the heuristic of interpreting the definition of spicy in the context of their background more often than not works out. (If it didn't, Indian restaurants who have been established for decades would have learned and changed their ways) On a separately interesting note, I'm a brown person... I love spicy Indian food, but I have trouble handling it. Invariably I get all snotty, but I keep eating it. I have to keep a ton of tissues nearby to keep wiping snot, but my god food without the spicy kick is just too bland for me. I wish so bad that I didn't get snotty every time I ate spicy. It's kind of embarrassing and disgusting that when I'm eating out with folks, they have to see me constantly wiping my nose.
  - MPSimmons 8y ago
    Only two times in my life have I been brought to weep because of how spicy something was, and both times, it was the F'ing Cajuns. I have no idea what they did, but oh my god. They showed up one time at an Octoberfest (!!!) with their damned salsa. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get something that will cut heat at a German festival? I had to eat a cream puff the size of my head to stop the pain. And yes, every time, my nose runs like a sieve. I feel your pain.
    - enno_au 8y ago
      One word of advice, capsaicin is an oil. Trying to dull the pain with milk, etc is a waste of time. You need to dissolve the oil off your tongue and for that alcohol is the best solution (no pun intended). Pure spirits work well to remove the capsaicin and then you can follow up with something that will soothe your raw nerve endings. So, German beer may have been the right answer for you at the time.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > One word of advice, capsaicin is an oil. Trying to dull the pain with milk, etc is a waste of time. No, it's not; cold milk, largely because of casein, which is lipophilic, is one of the most effective remedies (sugar solution in water is also effective, though somewhat less so.) > You need to dissolve the oil off your tongue and for that alcohol is the best solution (no pun intended). Pure spirits work well to remove the capsaicin and then you can follow up with something that will soothe your raw nerve endings. So, German beer may have been the right answer for you at the time. Pure alcohol is effective, and recommended for cleaning things that have been contaminated with capsaicin, but is not a great idea to ingest. Mixtures of alcohol and water that are far more of the latter than the former are not particularly useful.
      - setr 8y ago
        Beer consistently raises the pain temporarily, and does nothing longer-term, in my experience. Milk and sugar soothe for the short term, but nothing long term. Haven’t tried spirits, but given how beer goes, I dont have much hopes
- ForrestN 8y ago
  I think you're looking at this from the wrong direction. Instead of starting from "what is my ideal experience, and why are people failing to deliver that to me," try thinking "what does the existing equilibrium have to teach me about this situation?" If you stop and think, you'll realize that the ubiquity of this "problem" for you is proof that your intuition is wrong, that you are an outlier, that the vast majority of incidents in which the spiciness doesn't suit the patron goes in the opposite direction. The fact that you get so much pushback is proof that they are right to do so far more often than they are wrong. There's no reason to think that so many people at so many restaurants would be all be mistaken in the same direction and with such an extreme degree of conviction. And there is something you can do—offer a lot of resistance without refusing so that all but the most stubborn customers who've tied their self esteem to their ability to eat spicy foods don't make the mistake of ordering food that's too spicy for them.
  - learc83 8y ago
    That's not proof at all. Stereotypes and confirmation bias are well documented phenomena. It's very easy for people to take a few examples of behaviors by people from a certain group and apply that behavior to the entire group when they aren't members of that group--despite what the actual statistics show. An example that happens all of the time in food service is assigning racial heuristics to tipping. A waitress has 2 customers who leave small tips, customer A is the same race as the waitress, customer B isn’t. The waitress dismisses customer A as a generic asshole, but she uses the example of customer B to reinforce her belief about customer B’s race’s tipping habits. The waitresses behavior (even multiple waitresses across multiple restaurants) certainly isn’t proof of anything about any group’s tipping behaviors. People from hundreds of different cultures will insist that their cuisine is the spiciest and that no one else from any other culture could possibly handle their food--they can’t all be right. Clearly there are a lot of people overestimating their cuisine’s relative spiciness.
    - ForrestN 8y ago
      Have you had much experience working in food service? The iteration happens incredibly quickly. Any kind of cultural factor (like, say, a predisposition to underestimate the tolerances of white people) will quickly be erased by dozens and dozens of experiences. When you are waiting tables all day, you're optimizing for two things: tips, and, even more so, limiting annoying situations. A hypothetical server who carries the bias you describe will learn quickly, like, within a night or two, that haranguing their customers about spiciness will result in both worse tips and a lot of extra hassles. In your example, you were so agitated about the spiciness that you even got their boss involved—that's a huge hassle for a server, a big waste of time and something that probably annoys their boss. I can say from experience that servers do not have the luxury of making decisions based on arbitrary cultural factors. The data is being drilled into them all day, every day, and in all but the most unusual cases, servers will take the path of least resistance to quick turnover and tips. And if you want to deal in stereotypes, don't underestimate the practicality of immigrants.
- foobar1962 8y ago
  > Warning customers that your food is spicy is one thing. Refusing to accept that your culture isn't the only one on the planet that enjoys spicy food is something else entirely. When I was waiting in a Thai restaurant (in Australia) I too started do the "are you really sure" thing after a couple of customers ordered the hottest dishes on the menu, then complained they couldn't eat them and wanted a refund. People would often ask for a "mild" version of, say, Tom Yum soup, which is not really possible without thinning it down with water and losing all the flavour.
  - Isamu 8y ago
    This. When they ask you "are you sure" they are just wary of getting jerked around by people who really have no idea, and who can't abide having to live with their decisions. They get those people all the time. As an aside, I remember somebody returning a standard grilled chicken sandwich at McDonalds for being unbearably spicy.
    - alasdair_ 8y ago
      >As an aside, I remember somebody returning a standard grilled chicken sandwich at McDonalds for being unbearably spicy. Maybe it was secretly a McSpicy? https://www.mcdonalds.com.sg/food-menu/mcspicy/ https://www.mcdonalds.com.sg/food-menu/mcspicy/
  - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
    Well, why can't you just make the food less spicy, but advertise it as more? I don't mean you should lie- just slide your spiciness scale down a bit so that what you call "hot" is actually mild and what you call extra super hot is just sorta-hot, for you, but not for the customers. I don't reckon anyone has ever requested a refund because they could actually eat what they ordered. As to those customers who only order hot food to brag to their friends, they can pretend their food is really hot and nobody has to know the truth.
    - foobar1962 8y ago
      > Well, why can't you just make the food less spicy, but advertise it as more? I don't mean you should lie- just slide your spiciness scale down a bit so that what you call "hot" is actually mild and what you call extra super hot is just sorta-hot, for you, but not for the customers. Some dishes like Thai Green Curry are based on green chillies (and Red curry on red chillies). Adding less chilli just dilutes the flavour an makes it weak (but still hot). You cannot really substitute the chilli with another milder ingredient like capsicum (bell pepper) because the flavour will change completely.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Warning customers that your food is spicy is one thing. Refusing to accept that your culture isn't the only one on the planet that enjoys spicy food is something else entirely Different peppers contain various combinations of different capsaicinoids, and spicy dishes fun different cultures also have different non-capsaicinoids as best components. It's very common for someone used to spicy dishes of one culture to not be able to handle those of a different culture, and I'm not at all surprised that people working in food have developed a fair skepticism of people who think (often not inaccurately, for some particular cultural cuisine) they can handle spice (and often food-culture-specific codes that bypass this skepticism by signaling familiarity with the food culture in question.)
roguecoder 8y ago
Why do you think the people who would not want to eat spicy food would order Indian food advertised as spicy and authentic when they have lots of other options already? Whereas people who want spicy food are underserved by current options, so selling to them seems like a smart move.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  > Why do you think the people who would not want to eat spicy food would order Indian food advertised as spicy and authentic when they have lots of other options already? Regardless of whether it makes logical sense, in practical reality, they do.
transreal 8y ago
One thing I feel is missing in the world is a standardized way to talk about chili levels, like a more accessible Scoville scale that includes things like black pepper. The lack of standardization makes it hard to know what you'll get. Even in India, from region to region what is considered mild or spicy varies, e.g. a spicy dish in Pune can be less hot than a "mild" dish in Hyderabad.

learc83 8y ago

Warning customers that your food is spicy is one thing. Refusing to accept that your culture isn't the only one on the planet that enjoys spicy food is something else entirely. There are white people who don't like spicy food, and there are Indians who don't like spicy food. There are probably more white people who don't like spicy food than Indians who don't (percentage wise). But if you use this heuristic instead of listening to your customers, you'll be wrong more often than you're right. >my mother, for example, is constantly enamored of the idea of spicy food, orders it "medium" or even "spicy," and then struggles to eat it There's really nothing you can do about this unless you plan on just flat out refusing to listen to your customer's stated preferences.

pen2l 8y ago
Roughly 10 years ago, I briefly worked as a waiter in an Indian restaurant in the midwest. Easily, more than 90% of the white people who wanted things "spicy" on the Indian spicy scale could _not_ handle it. So the heuristic of interpreting the definition of spicy in the context of their background more often than not works out. (If it didn't, Indian restaurants who have been established for decades would have learned and changed their ways) On a separately interesting note, I'm a brown person... I love spicy Indian food, but I have trouble handling it. Invariably I get all snotty, but I keep eating it. I have to keep a ton of tissues nearby to keep wiping snot, but my god food without the spicy kick is just too bland for me. I wish so bad that I didn't get snotty every time I ate spicy. It's kind of embarrassing and disgusting that when I'm eating out with folks, they have to see me constantly wiping my nose.
- MPSimmons 8y ago
  Only two times in my life have I been brought to weep because of how spicy something was, and both times, it was the F'ing Cajuns. I have no idea what they did, but oh my god. They showed up one time at an Octoberfest (!!!) with their damned salsa. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get something that will cut heat at a German festival? I had to eat a cream puff the size of my head to stop the pain. And yes, every time, my nose runs like a sieve. I feel your pain.
  - enno_au 8y ago
    One word of advice, capsaicin is an oil. Trying to dull the pain with milk, etc is a waste of time. You need to dissolve the oil off your tongue and for that alcohol is the best solution (no pun intended). Pure spirits work well to remove the capsaicin and then you can follow up with something that will soothe your raw nerve endings. So, German beer may have been the right answer for you at the time.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > One word of advice, capsaicin is an oil. Trying to dull the pain with milk, etc is a waste of time. No, it's not; cold milk, largely because of casein, which is lipophilic, is one of the most effective remedies (sugar solution in water is also effective, though somewhat less so.) > You need to dissolve the oil off your tongue and for that alcohol is the best solution (no pun intended). Pure spirits work well to remove the capsaicin and then you can follow up with something that will soothe your raw nerve endings. So, German beer may have been the right answer for you at the time. Pure alcohol is effective, and recommended for cleaning things that have been contaminated with capsaicin, but is not a great idea to ingest. Mixtures of alcohol and water that are far more of the latter than the former are not particularly useful.
    - setr 8y ago
      Beer consistently raises the pain temporarily, and does nothing longer-term, in my experience. Milk and sugar soothe for the short term, but nothing long term. Haven’t tried spirits, but given how beer goes, I dont have much hopes
ForrestN 8y ago
I think you're looking at this from the wrong direction. Instead of starting from "what is my ideal experience, and why are people failing to deliver that to me," try thinking "what does the existing equilibrium have to teach me about this situation?" If you stop and think, you'll realize that the ubiquity of this "problem" for you is proof that your intuition is wrong, that you are an outlier, that the vast majority of incidents in which the spiciness doesn't suit the patron goes in the opposite direction. The fact that you get so much pushback is proof that they are right to do so far more often than they are wrong. There's no reason to think that so many people at so many restaurants would be all be mistaken in the same direction and with such an extreme degree of conviction. And there is something you can do—offer a lot of resistance without refusing so that all but the most stubborn customers who've tied their self esteem to their ability to eat spicy foods don't make the mistake of ordering food that's too spicy for them.
- learc83 8y ago
  That's not proof at all. Stereotypes and confirmation bias are well documented phenomena. It's very easy for people to take a few examples of behaviors by people from a certain group and apply that behavior to the entire group when they aren't members of that group--despite what the actual statistics show. An example that happens all of the time in food service is assigning racial heuristics to tipping. A waitress has 2 customers who leave small tips, customer A is the same race as the waitress, customer B isn’t. The waitress dismisses customer A as a generic asshole, but she uses the example of customer B to reinforce her belief about customer B’s race’s tipping habits. The waitresses behavior (even multiple waitresses across multiple restaurants) certainly isn’t proof of anything about any group’s tipping behaviors. People from hundreds of different cultures will insist that their cuisine is the spiciest and that no one else from any other culture could possibly handle their food--they can’t all be right. Clearly there are a lot of people overestimating their cuisine’s relative spiciness.
  - ForrestN 8y ago
    Have you had much experience working in food service? The iteration happens incredibly quickly. Any kind of cultural factor (like, say, a predisposition to underestimate the tolerances of white people) will quickly be erased by dozens and dozens of experiences. When you are waiting tables all day, you're optimizing for two things: tips, and, even more so, limiting annoying situations. A hypothetical server who carries the bias you describe will learn quickly, like, within a night or two, that haranguing their customers about spiciness will result in both worse tips and a lot of extra hassles. In your example, you were so agitated about the spiciness that you even got their boss involved—that's a huge hassle for a server, a big waste of time and something that probably annoys their boss. I can say from experience that servers do not have the luxury of making decisions based on arbitrary cultural factors. The data is being drilled into them all day, every day, and in all but the most unusual cases, servers will take the path of least resistance to quick turnover and tips. And if you want to deal in stereotypes, don't underestimate the practicality of immigrants.
foobar1962 8y ago
> Warning customers that your food is spicy is one thing. Refusing to accept that your culture isn't the only one on the planet that enjoys spicy food is something else entirely. When I was waiting in a Thai restaurant (in Australia) I too started do the "are you really sure" thing after a couple of customers ordered the hottest dishes on the menu, then complained they couldn't eat them and wanted a refund. People would often ask for a "mild" version of, say, Tom Yum soup, which is not really possible without thinning it down with water and losing all the flavour.
- Isamu 8y ago
  This. When they ask you "are you sure" they are just wary of getting jerked around by people who really have no idea, and who can't abide having to live with their decisions. They get those people all the time. As an aside, I remember somebody returning a standard grilled chicken sandwich at McDonalds for being unbearably spicy.
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    >As an aside, I remember somebody returning a standard grilled chicken sandwich at McDonalds for being unbearably spicy. Maybe it was secretly a McSpicy? https://www.mcdonalds.com.sg/food-menu/mcspicy/ https://www.mcdonalds.com.sg/food-menu/mcspicy/
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  Well, why can't you just make the food less spicy, but advertise it as more? I don't mean you should lie- just slide your spiciness scale down a bit so that what you call "hot" is actually mild and what you call extra super hot is just sorta-hot, for you, but not for the customers. I don't reckon anyone has ever requested a refund because they could actually eat what they ordered. As to those customers who only order hot food to brag to their friends, they can pretend their food is really hot and nobody has to know the truth.
  - foobar1962 8y ago
    > Well, why can't you just make the food less spicy, but advertise it as more? I don't mean you should lie- just slide your spiciness scale down a bit so that what you call "hot" is actually mild and what you call extra super hot is just sorta-hot, for you, but not for the customers. Some dishes like Thai Green Curry are based on green chillies (and Red curry on red chillies). Adding less chilli just dilutes the flavour an makes it weak (but still hot). You cannot really substitute the chilli with another milder ingredient like capsicum (bell pepper) because the flavour will change completely.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Warning customers that your food is spicy is one thing. Refusing to accept that your culture isn't the only one on the planet that enjoys spicy food is something else entirely Different peppers contain various combinations of different capsaicinoids, and spicy dishes fun different cultures also have different non-capsaicinoids as best components. It's very common for someone used to spicy dishes of one culture to not be able to handle those of a different culture, and I'm not at all surprised that people working in food have developed a fair skepticism of people who think (often not inaccurately, for some particular cultural cuisine) they can handle spice (and often food-culture-specific codes that bypass this skepticism by signaling familiarity with the food culture in question.)

roguecoder 8y ago

Why do you think the people who would not want to eat spicy food would order Indian food advertised as spicy and authentic when they have lots of other options already? Whereas people who want spicy food are underserved by current options, so selling to them seems like a smart move.

umanwizard 8y ago
> Why do you think the people who would not want to eat spicy food would order Indian food advertised as spicy and authentic when they have lots of other options already? Regardless of whether it makes logical sense, in practical reality, they do.

transreal 8y ago

One thing I feel is missing in the world is a standardized way to talk about chili levels, like a more accessible Scoville scale that includes things like black pepper. The lack of standardization makes it hard to know what you'll get. Even in India, from region to region what is considered mild or spicy varies, e.g. a spicy dish in Pune can be less hot than a "mild" dish in Hyderabad.