When ordering at the local Indian restaurant (Indian? They’re all Bangladeshi. …Anyway~), it helps to say “Bangladeshi strength”, to prevent them serving the bland stuff.
I like that cultures that make spicy food, usually have a “mild” for their fellow countrymen, and a special “mild” for white people.
The white person mild.
I think that’s hilarious.
For the record, I’m white and I appreciate having white person mild as an option.
I get frustrated because I LOVE super-spicy food, but every time I go to a new Asian or Indian restaurant and ask for 5/5 spicy they’re like, “We’ll make you a 2/5” just to be safe because I’m very, very white.
I have literally never had food served to me at a restaurant that was too spicy for me. I’ve basically damaged my tongue with all the spicy food I eat, and I literally don’t perceive Sriracha as being any spicer than banana pudding.
I’ve had that happen at a few places as well, it’s pretty annoying. I’m also really short, and so I’ve had one restaurant swap what I actually ordered to whatever the closest equivalent on their kids’ menu is lol
I literally don’t perceive Sriracha as being any spicer than banana pudding.
Genuine question: Are there many people who really perceive Sriracha as spicy? I never thought that it’s meant to be really spicy, but more like a ‘chili-flavored’ sauce.
It’s ketchup with a chili flavor.
There are people who find it so spicy it ruins their day if it gets on their tongue.
I mean, sure. There are a few sensitive people for everything. I once met someone who found even regular curry powder super spicy. I was just wondering about the statement above, because in my experience Sriracha is the absolute entry level when it comes to ‘hot’ sauces.
I saw a post once along the lines of: Only certain groups of white people don’t do spicy, other groups eat hot sauces with names like The Asshole Scorcher. Personally, I love certain kinds of spicy. Like Korean food spicy is soooo fucking good. Eat a spicy noodle soup and be drenched in sweat at the end.
Those chili spice ratings on food packets and menus are always bullshit as well
So, I went into Chipotle the other day, and approached the young black dude who was taking the order, and asked for a bowl. Then he asked which rice, and said “Let me guess: White?”
I don’t know if he was being racist or what, but I’ve got a thick (white) skin, and can see the humor in anything, so I was laughing when I said “What the fuck is THAT supposed to mean?..but, yeah, I want white rice, but still, what the fuck, dude?”
He got really nervous at that point, thinking he offended me, and of course I took advantage and guilted him into extra steak and guac.
Years from now he will wake up while falling asleep, randomly remembering this awkward encounter
This is mild racism.
I worked at Denny’s and I always asked “Ranch?” when people got fries. One day an AlphaMacho™ man literally got up from his seat and loudly said “is that because I’m white?!” and I was stunned, then my manager - a Cowboys loving, Harley riding, neon-red redneck - popped up from around the corner and said “Hey calm down little man, everybody always gets ranch with their fries, boy’s just trying’ to save time”
Jokes aside it kinda is, but as a white guy who actually like hot food I’ve also been known to say “and don’t make it white guy spicy, be real”
I usually say that that in Indian restaurants because some of the ones near me will definitely hold back otherwise. One time the server asked me like 5 times if I was sure and there wouldn’t be a refund if I couldn’t handle it. I said bring it on and he watched me eat it from across the restaurant in amazement lol. It was the spiciest curry I’ve ever had, absolutely wrecked my stomach that night, 10/10.
I’ve heard that people with high tolerance for alcoholic beverages also have high tolerance for extreme spicy foods.
Apparently certain opiod receptors respond to both alcohol and spicy foods. There’s also an interesting relation between getting an endorphin rush from eating spicy foods and naltrexone — I guess people who really like spicy foods respond better to the drug.
It’s taco bell, it’s all mild sauce
but there’s an onion in there sometimes!
Everybody watch out, we got a badass over here.
They’re not wrong, though. Even their Diablo sauce is only rated to around ~15,000 SHU (though some will argue that Fire sauce is hotter and thus Diablo is actually less than 1000, myself included).
Even if the rating is accurate, that means at the very most Taco Bell sauce is barely hotter than a jalapeño, which any hot sauce enthusiast will confirm is on the lower end of the Scoville scale.
The point I’m making is that they’re not bragging, they’re stating simple facts.
I just believe words have meaning
If Taco Bell has sauces that are Hot, Fire, and Diablo then what are other actual hot sauces called?
It’s hyperbole, like someone saying their chicken wings were AMAZING.
If by some miracle Jesus came down from heaven and made sweet love to you all night what would you call it? They’ve already wasted AMAZING on a damn chicken wing.
credit to Louis CK for the Jesus bit
I think those names are pretty appropriate on the scale of Mild to Ass Reaper.
If Taco Bell has sauces that are Hot, Fire, and Diablo then what are other actual hot sauces called?
Hot sauce has a long history of hyperbole with marketing. I get that a lot of folks have a preference for high spice (I am one) and the pinch of cayenne that goes into a fancy fruit pie or taco bell sauce packet is going to be barely detectable, but I cook a lot for other folks and if someone says they don’t like any spice then diablo will ruin their night.
I’d call that shit biblical, messianic. Miraculous, even.
I probably wouldn’t enjoy it though because I don’t like men that way.
I have faith that Jesus would become a woman for me.
Unfortunately in religion, PR comes before everything. Or before most things. And Jesus’s clients know him as a man, so I don’t think he’s gonna budge on that
I’d call it what it is: rape.
Supreme Court already said Jesus also has presidential immunity
Their Diablo sauce is pretty good but still not that spicy
Ordered TBell over the weekend, and the order came with Diablo. Don’t usually order sauce because I have my own. Decided to give it a try.
It was like barely more spicy than hot Tobasco or Chalula. I was honestly disappointed
Doesn’t feel mild coming out the other end.
Sounds like you might have gastrointestinal issues. Taco Bell hot sauce isn’t potent enough to give you the shits.
Could also be previously undiagnosed lactose intolerance, especially if you usually order it “supreme” (which adds sour cream).
If you drink enough most things will give you the shits. All that matters is I won the bet and didn’t have to pay for lunch.
That probably has nothing to do with the sauce
Salt is often a bit too spicy for me
This is why we need better language describing spices in English. We have salty spices and spicy hot spices. Even if spicy hot spices there are three very different and distinct chemicals that make spicy hot spices.
That’s not even to begin to tackle the question of how to talk about the levels of the spice.
I use caliente, picante, and aromatic to describe the meanings of the English spicy. Salty is just salty, or maybe seasoned if I’m feeling fancy.
Wait what are the salty spices other than salt?
Think like an everything bagel. A lot of the stuff one foods like that may be considered spicy but not hot. Like if you just dumped Anton of seasoning on something you might say “it’s too spicy” but not mean hot.
Is taco bell mild sauce just a packet of air?
Medium sauce is water with pepper sprinkled in.
A guy I work with once went with his two black friends to their local chip shop, owned by a big Jamaican guy.
He was the only white person in there, and when he placed his order, the owner went “Dja want gravy wit dat? White people always want graavyy”.
He did want gravy.
“How dare you! But yes.”
I’m white and I want gravy
“I knew when you walked in you were gonna order the chicken”
“All these years I thought I liked chicken 'cause it was delicious! Turns out I was genetically predisposed to liking chicken.”
Racial profiling in food is just an attempt to deliver the customer what they want. It would be the most benign form.
I’m oldish and pasty white, I have a hell of a time getting Mexican places to make it proper hot.
That said, I do love me potatoes and gravy…
In fairness, gravy is the tits
White. Brown. It’s all good. Can’t go wrong. Same goes for gravy.
Hell yeah, I want gravy.
My wife is white and every time she gets forks and spoons at a Asian restaurant, she’s absolutely delighted. She can use chopsticks, just not well.
At a Indian restaurant, the waiter said, “We have regular and spicy… And Indian spicy.” Then he goes, “I usually don’t offer Indian spicy to everybody”. I’m brown, and I was given special treatment. But honestly I think I broke his heart when I asked for regular because he thought I could hang.
Sorry man! 😭
The Indian place I often go to will only actually give me the spice level I’m asking for (1-10 scale) if I call to order it. If I go in and ask for it spicy, it’s always suuuuper mild. Very very annoying, because damnit that’s not what I ordered, and I know what I’m doing. I’ve even specifically asked for it to be done the way they’d eat it and nope.
My partner makes ghost pepper and reaper sauces. They just made ghost jerky. I like reaper cheese. I can handle it, but no. They won’t give it to me unless they don’t know it’s for me :(
One of my proudest moments as a white dude who likes spicy stuff was when a buddy and I were hanging out with some local guys while on a trip to Mexico. I was just chowing down on some super hot salsa and one of the Mexican guys gets real excited and starts calling me “the blond Mexican”. I’m sure my wife is tired of that story, but I will continue to tell it to her for the rest of my days.
Woah. If there’s one thing that excites me more than foreigners speaking Spanish, it’s people eating our food how it should be eaten. Well done! I hope you enjoyed yourself.
So I have a question about this.
When I was in high school I worked with a woman from Mexico (many immigrants actually, it was an ag job), like her English wasn’t that great because she recently moved to that area sort of thing.
She was nice, maybe late 20s, and had a couple kids. She brought lunch for me a few times that she made, and I was blown away by how bland it was, since I’d been under the impression that Mexican food was typically spicier (kinda like most Indian food I’ve has is strongly flavored) so I asked about it.
She said that in Mexico they don’t actually make everything super hot, because kids need to eat and don’t like spice, so most spice is added by the eater at the table or whatever.
Is that true, or was she being nice about my possibly offensive confusion?
The food culture of Mexico is amazing, and if you’re eating at the right places there is usually no option but to speak Spanish! I’ve had to request “más picante” before, though generally that is at restaurants used to serving gringos. At tianguis or taco guys on the street there’s usually no problem getting the spice.
Achievement unlocked!
Well done, dude. It is a fine and honorable story to tell, and let no one tell you otherwise!
Güero! Estas invitado a la carne asada!
I’m white and they said that to me once, but there was such an underlying tone of menace in “Indian hot” that I knew they weren’t fucking around.
That is such a perfect way to describe how “Indian hot” is offered! No malice, of course, just an honest warning!
Why don’t you make hot a little hotter, make that the top number and make that a little hotter?
Most places only have 10 hot, but if you’re chowing on 10 and want to go hotter, where can you go from there? That’s why ours goes to 11
A friend and I went to an indian place and got their hottest dish. We both kinda shrugged at it, and the waiters took offense and brought out raw onions slathered in hot sauce. Eating those helped, but it still wasn’t really spicy, ya know? Neither of us are even the heat fanatics, habanero levels of hot are good enough, so maybe some places just do like 5s and hope nobody wants the 10s.
One step away from !aneurysmposting@sopuli.xyz
Sometimes when my boyfriend and I want a spicy cuisine, I’ll do the online ordering because I’m the one with the non-white name. He’s convinced they tone down the spice levels when they see his name on the order.😂
I’m white British and went through this at a New Zealand Indian restaurant. After all the warnings, Indian spicy was barely even mid-level spicy. I’m from Bradford and don’t need mollycoddling.
In my experience Indians and British Asians are not even that into spice heat as a whole.
Bradford counts as its own race, regardless of skin pigmentation
I’m white, my wife is Desi. She can’t handle spicy food, and I thrive on it. We order each other’s dishes.
My wife is West Indian and trying to convince restaurants she wants actually spicy food is a constant struggle
A kebab place in town used to have their spicyness range from “Norwegian mild” to “immigrant spicy”.
I once went from my regular order of “Norwegian spicy” up to “immigrant mild”. Bad move for me, delicious kebab though.
I’m VERY white, and so is my tolerance of spicyness. I always have to ask if the food is actually spicy or Dutch-spicy, because if it’s the former, I’ll take the extra mild please.
We call that “Upper Midwest Spicy” in my house.
I kinda wanna ask for Indian spicy next time I go to a restaurant
Ask if they could bring just a spoon full for you to test your might. I bet they’d have a laugh setting your intestines on fire.
One time I was at an event with Indian catering. I picked the dish I wanted, and the caterers warned me that it was spicy. I was halfway through it when the person I was having a chat with asked if the spicy dish was good. I was like “what? This is supposed to be spicy?” Then I paid attention and realised it was a bit spicy, I just forgot because it was less spice than I’m used to. It was delicious though and I used my naan to soak up all the sauce
I guess that was probably white spicy. I want to try Indian spicy now
I’m a white guy and I genuinely love searing mouth pain followed shortly by burning bowel movements and it takes a real effort to convince most restaurants that I can handle the heat.
I get a lot of ‘are you sure?’ When I ask for hot sauce
That podcast is hilarious for all the wrong reasons. They are not only race reductionists but they basically boil everything down to individual attitudes and beliefs.
One of the most egregious ones was when they told people not to practice speaking people’s native languages with them and to hire a tutor! Dumbest fucking people, they are equally as smart as MAGA.
The language tutoring lobby got to them…
I moved recently and tried a Thai place down the street. The guy asked if I wanted mild, medium, or spicy, and I said spicy. He said :No, I think mild." I didn’t know what to say and he added “…but you can have it however you want.” I decided to try medium.
He came by after and asked how the spiciness was, and I said it was just a little spicier than I like it (I ate it without issue), and he said “I told you!”
You just gotta know whose palate it’s balanced for. Taco bell is meant for white people. Their hottest sauce has a maybe jalapeño-level spice to it (and it tastes like shit). Go to any legit Thai or Indian place and their medium will destroy the hottest you can get at any tex-mex chain.
Is it racist to say Taco Bell is meant for white people?
No, it’s just a reflection of their target audience/corporate strategy.
Just a casual reminder that this guy is a Mexican, raised in Mexico City.
Looked it up (under “Early life” on Wikipedia). Born in Washington D.C. actually, but his father is of Mexican and Hungarian-Jewish descent and the family lived his first 7 years in Mexico.
Born in Washington D.C. actually
That’s actually the reason I couldn’t use the phrase “born & bred”, because it would’ve been inaccurate. However, it is accurate to say he’s Mexican (has dual US & Mexico citizenship) and grew up (spent most of his formative years) in Mexico City.
Edit whops I said “raised in” not “grew up in”.
Since it is TexMex, a food that was practically invented for white people, I would say no.
We really need a decent scale for spicyness of foods. The mild/medium/spicy thing is by far too unspecific.
There’s an Indian place down the road that we sometimes order from. I like moderate levels of spicy, so it works well for me. But my wife dislikes hot spicy foods at all. So when I ordered the food I asked if the dish is completely non-spicy, and they confirmed that it was completely non-spicy, and it was too spicy for my wife.
Scoville?
cassandrafatigue already suggested that, and I answered below that: https://lemmy.world/comment/21043110
deleted by creator
Afaik scoville only works for chilli peppers. It doesn’t work for other spicy things like e.g. pepper and it doesn’t work for prepared dishes either.
So you can say “This dish contains chilli peppers with X scoville”, but since the amount of chilli in there also matters, that’s only part of the equation. For example, a single drop of 100 000 scoville chilli pepper on a whole plate of otherwise non-spicy food might be less spicy than e.g. a dish consisting almost entirely of 30 000 scoville chilli peppers.
There’s math to be done here.
Seems like something where you could ask where eating a whole jalapeno falls on their spiciness scale, because that’s a very mild pepper and as someone who likes moderate spice and enjoys jalapeno based dishes, that seems like a very good anchor to start with
That’s not a bad idea, actually.
Maybe that could replace the scale actually. “This dish is equivalent to 5 pepper corns. This one here is equivalent to a jalapeno. This one is equivalent to a habanero.” and so on.
Seriously, why is the Diablo sauce so foul? I always get fire sauce because it actually tastes good. But I want it with more heat!
Honestly the mild sauce taste better, even though I like really spicy like ghost pepper+ levels of heat I get mild at Taco Bell on the rare occasion I go.
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be that way, but it so often is. I like the Herndez brand mexican salsa you get at the grocery store (US), but the flavor of the medium is so much better than the flavor of the hot. It’s like with the hot ones, the only care about getting the heat.
I’ve had very hot sauces that had really good flavor, it just seems more rare.
That should be the default spicy, so when I say ‘very mild’ it’s doesn’t turn out sweet.
I feel like the stereotype has trended binary recently: white dudes are either the “black pepper is too spicy” type, or they’re the chili heads who mainline reapers
As a white girl, I like medium peppers and can occasionally enjoy a habeñero sauce but I’ll feel it. The thing is it’s just unremarkable, so I rarely say it. Most white people in my life like how spicy I cook things. That said my mom actually did think black pepper was too spicy.
I like stuff that’s hot but not to the point I can’t taste anything in the food other than hotness. It’s supposed to be a condiment not take over the whole meal.
I think that unless folks can handle wildly intense things like reaper sauce, most people’s favorite level of spice is just beneath their tolerance. Like they would rather have a spicy meal they can handle than a single crazy spicy bite. It just turns out that people have different tolerances. For some people, that ideal level for them is just a little black pepper. For many people though, black pepper is hardly noticeable, or at least forgettable.
That’s certainly the case with me. I use red pepper flakes a ton and Black pepper is noticeable but I wouldn’t consider it spicy or hot. As far as actual hot stuff (to me) habenero sauce seems to about my limit for what I would use and still consider good and I can eat jalapenos all day.
There’s a guy that comes out to our happy hours sometimes that always makes a big show of asking for the hottest wings they have and then after he starts on them asking the waiter if those are really the hottest (while red faced and sweating). It’s really annoying.
I’m a white man, I enjoy very spicy food. My partner is a southeastern Asian woman, who enjoys a bit less spicy food. I find it easier if we just order for each other and swap plates when the food comes. Because the servers assume that I can’t handle spice, and my partner can. Which is incorrect. Also, my partner isn’t very happy about it.
The other day was my retirement party. We went to a local Chinese place, and while all the others were getting the touristy stuff, sweet sour and mu shu, I said “smoked bean pork.” The waiter looked at me like I was from Alpha Centauri, like “what’s an old white guy doing ordering the good stuff?”
Mexicans are usually surprised that I order the lengua tacos. I have to assure them that I know that means beef tongue.
