spicy food

[jfb]

Today was the first time I had too-spicy food since the time I underestimated wasabi.

A lot of Thai restaurants will offer you a choice of spiciness, say from 0 to 4, and I usually go with the 3--I can handle the 4, but I don't really enjoy it more. Today at a place I'd never been to before I was told their spiciness scale ranges from 1 to 10. Okay, I thought, if their ten is somewhere else's four, multiply by 3/4, round down for safety, and I ordered a 7.

Later, after some coughing, some headshaking, and a little bit of weeping, I concluded that in fact, their four is everybody else's four. Their scale just goes a lot higher.

Comments

Re:

[jfb.livejournal.com]

It was the Blue Mango, on Stevens Creek Boulevard near 280 in San Jose. It was pretty good--especially the less spicy entree--and has a big vegetarian menu, which I plan to explore more. (There's an open mike down the street I plan to attend for a while.)

If I'm actually dispensing information instead of just telling a story, I should confess that after the soup cooled off a little it seemed much less lethal. 7 might be safer than it seemed.

Re:

[sebab.livejournal.com]

thanks!