Definitely for a coworker

I don’t like water. It’s too spicy.

To quote a Minnesotan I know, talking about chili: "I'm going to add some mayo, to give it some zing"

Luckily the twin cities are sanctuary cities and you can get people who aren't whiter than rice to make food here

sounds like the uk

Finally a reason for me to consider moving to the Midwest.

Wisconsin, where they ask you how spicy you want your food on a scale from mozzarella to cheddar.

As an ohioan there's 2 different spice levels. One for your average milquetoast Midwestern old white people and one for the rest of us who go out of their way to put hot sauce on literally everything

I once told my delivery Indian food place that they should make it as hot as the cook would eat it

It was one of the few times I barely managed to finish a hot dish

I felt the spiciness the next day when I peed

I was meeting some friends at a Turkish restaurant and the table next to us ordered something so spicy I had to leave. Don't know what it was or how they ordered it but damn that level of spice should be illegal.

Restaurants very rarely go full spicy with non natives of the cuisine and for good reason.
You can persuade them if you're a regular and they can up the stakes gradually without risking to burn you out of existence, but otherwise they'll just lie to you.

It feels great when they don't feel they have to protect you from yourself and just bring you however they eat it, but they are very right that most people can't deal.
I could once, but I come originally from a place where spicy is really spicy, and had been growing my tolerance for a while.
I wouldn't even try it now.

I straight up would have just left and refused to pay.

I am surprised you still ordered from them after so many screwed up orders. I give them a couple of tries, but if they can't make my curry spicy, I will find a place that will.

i didn't know what drunken noodles are so i looked it up. but it says it's a thai dish?

I am afraid of the 10 now. That must be like a hot lava geiser.

Malaysian spice is crazy too. Think I ordered mild and that was wild

Yup the word hot is used to specify the heat level, spicy just means it uses various spices in it, which could include stuff like cinnamon or cardamom etc which don’t add heat but impart flavor and aroma

To be fair, the English language doesn't have a true word for capsaicin-y. Spanish has the word picante ("prick-y/bite-y/stingy") which is distinct from hot (caliente) and spice (especia).

That's a very good point, a lot of spices (and herbs) have strong flavors, even some "hot"ness, but little or no capsaicin. As a person who has a bad reaction to capsaicin (Even a moderate amount causes my hæmorrhoids to hæmorrhage for days. And yet, less applicable to Indian food, I can have all the wasabi/horseradish all day) but loves the other strong flavours of Indian food I would politely ask the waiter or chef to leave out the chilies and go easy on the ginger, but let loose on everything else they want: fenugreek, curry-leaf, asafœtida, aniseed, garlic, cardamom, coriander, black pepper and all the "secret spices" that make up their signature flavour.

And I would try to pick dishes where the base is something else and the chilies are added later, because they aren't going to want to start from scratch, they can't exactly un-marinate that chicken.

Mexican food is a little more challenging because chilies are the heart of it and often the first ingredient.

Spicy like a spiced wine.

I don't have a particularly strong spice tolerance- Shin Black absolutely takes me out, but there's two Chinese restaurants that I occasionally order from and they have chili oil that they market as "🌶️🌶️🌶️🥵" and I've ordered it just to try it out. I was expecting to take a dab of that and absolutely lose my shit, but man that shit was barely spicy at all. I couldn't believe how little spice that actually had. It had like the flavor of spice, but the scoville count must be in the low three digit range. That, or I'm just immune to that specific type of spice.

In my experience, mexican restaurants don't have particularly spicy sauces available. They can prepare food quite spicy, but they almost never have good sauces. The local Mexican place I go too has the most basic of sauces so I just bring my own because their food is excellent, it just needs more spice.

Wasabi and radishes and mustard have a different chemical mechanism from peppers for their spice. I had a friend who grew up in India, and has basically no regard for capsaicin, over for dinner one night. We had some radishes out of our garden, and some of them were definitely on the hot side so I warned her. She scoffed and bit off half a good sized radish. She was soon downing iced tea to wash it away and said, oh my god, is that what spicy food is like for you? But capsaicin is oil based and doesn't wash away so easily.

Germany was another country where, upon trying some chips that were labeled something like "Dangerously Ultra hot" actually made me laugh because they were about as spicy as black pepper.

I had some pretty solidly spicy curries and ramen in Japan though, I definitely think it's like the US where it's very regional.

I mean actual wasabi isn't that "hot", the majority of what is called wasabi, outside Japan is horseradish which is a lot "hotter". Wasabi is also eaten in incredibly small amounts to season the food rather than provide a dominant flavour.

Traditional Japanese food has almost no heat at all, short hop to Korea though where they love very spicy food.

I remember going to America for the first time ordering Mexican food that was absolutely load with Jalapenos and I was like "oh no, I'm in danger" then I bit into one and it just didn't do anything??? Was wondering if my mouth has just broken or something lol

That explains why I sometimes eat jalapenos and barely feel any spice

I, on the other hand decided to grow my own jalapeños a few years back. I thought it would be cool to grow scorpion peppers, too.

The scorpion peppers were dehydrated to be added to dishes sparingly to rapidly increase the spice without changing much flavor.

Did you know that scorpion peppers and jalapeños cross-pollinate? Those were some of the hottest jalapeños I have ever had in my life.

5/7 would do again.

Mainland Europe is pretty bad as well. I get „scharf“ in Germany and true to the birthplace of homeopathy, that’s some homeopathic capsaicin.

That's not why. It's because jalapenos are used in a lot of packaged food, and they need a uniform level of spiciness for that food. It's easier for them to start with a bland pepper then add a specific amount of capcacin to bring up the spice to the required level. If they rely on cultivated jalapenos that are spicy, there's a range of heat depending on growing conditions, etc.

They are essentially anaheims now, so annoying.

I thought they grew them to have no spice for standardization, then added capsacin so that they were always the same heat level?

Having grown jalapenos myself, it's an art. Happy plant, happy peppers. Keep the plant watered and healthy, the fruit comes out mild.

You can still buy the spicier varieties, though, right? So what's the problem?

I think there will be a lot of money to be made for someone who can create one thats spicy on the way in but not at all on the way out.

Once upon a time, I was traveling in Thailand and went to a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere that mostly served tourists. There were two guys there who thought they could handle spice, so they told the waiter to bring them something spiced for Thai locals. He tried to discourage them, and offered to give them something that was really spicy for westerners, but they insisted that they wanted what locals eat.

When they received their dish, they couldn't even manage a single bite. I could overhear them, and they were convinced that the waiter was playing a joke on them, so when he came back they asked him to try it to see if it was good, trying to catch him out. The waiter had a few bites, said "yeah, tastes good", asked if they needed anything else, and when they said no, just went on to help his other customers. The tourists were just gobsmacked.

I know my limits, and decently high for "The West", but it's nowhere near the limits of a Thai person who likes spicy food. And, I know enough to know that when I'm on vacation, I want it even less spicy than normal. If I get something ultra spicy at home, I might have to spend some unpleasant time on the toilet. But, at least it's my own toilet. I really didn't want to be caught out in some rural Thai toilet or outhouse trying to process something that was too much for me and missing out on enjoying my vacation.

All the wing places near me are crap, they have Atomic it's not even tabasco hot. I don't know how, but even their fucking jalapenos are weak.