No, not some totty flashing her whatsits. Apparently, Dave’s has come to London:
Famously, Dave’s offers a notoriously spicy ‘Reaper’ burger, covered in red-hot batter, said to reduce even the most hardened of chilli lovers to tears. Although the batter recipe is a closely-guarded secret, the key ingredient is powdered Carolina Reaper, the second-hottest chilli pepper in the world. Carolina Reaper registers a whopping 1.6 million on the Scoville scale, the internationally-accepted system used to measure the heat of chillis.
So it’s little surprise that customers can only order the Reaper if they are 18 or over and sign a legal waiver. According to the waiver, Reaper can cause ‘sweating, indigestion, shortness of breath, allergic reactions, vomiting and diarrhoea’, but in extreme cases, it can even lead to ‘chest pain, heart palpitations, heart attack and stroke’.
…with dolorous outcomes, because that’s what intrepid reporters do — stupid stuff:
For the first seven seconds after taking a big bite, it feels like the hype around the Reaper has been exaggerated – but the intense burn suddenly takes off like a bullet. As Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ starts playing on the loudspeakers, the heat-sensitive pain receptors in my mouth are triggered – and I soon turn into a total, sticky mess. Sweat flows from every pore of my face and snot dribbles from my nose, and I can’t wipe the tears from my eyes because I don’t want to touch them with my messy gloved hands. Struggling somewhat with my coordination, I slosh milkshake over my trousers and the floor. Reaper is ludicrously, idiotically hot.
The only idiot is you, dummy.
Let it be known that I’m not afraid of stuff like Madras curry, for example. I remember going to a restaurant in Bangalore, and ordering a Madras chicken dish.
The waiter looked at me a little dubiously. “You know the Madras is very spicy”, he murmured to me. (“Spicy” being how Indians describe something that’s going to set fire to your mouth.)
“Nah, I’m from South Africa,” I said to him. “I grew up eating hot curry ” (Which is true.)
And yes it was quite hot, but also very savory. I could have eaten two dishes of it. (Madras is actually classed as a “medium” hot curry.) I have no problem with Vindaloo — the next level up, and you have to hold me back when it comes to Lamb Vindaloo — but I draw the line very firmly at that point, because after Vindaloo, bad things start happening to you.
And for the record: Vindaloo curry measures about 15,000 to 20,000 Scoville units.
So 1.6 million Scovilles? You must be kidding.
And I’m calling bullshit on this whole “hot pepper” nonsense. It’s not manly or macho or any of that crap when it comes to handling peppery heat. 25,000 Scovilles is like rubbing Deep Heating cream on your skin; 1.6 million is pouring gasoline on yourself and setting it on fire. And I’m not really exaggerating, either.
Guys who brag about how much heat they can handle are vainglorious idiots, and quite frankly, they deserve every perforation they get in their stomachs or intestines.
As our flipping idiot brave reporter Jonathan Chadwick describes it:
Reaper is a 24-hour experiment on your body. As it travels, it inflicts different types of pain – burning numbness in the mouth, aching stomach, and, perhaps worst of all, the morning-after sensation of a red hot poker in the worst place imaginable.
A doctor buddy of mine back in Johannesburg told me once of a patient who actually had small lesions and blisters on their anus following a drunken night out feasting on super-hot food. The patient was female.
But hey: be my guest, but please don’t come to me for help because I’m just going to laugh at you.
spiciness and heat to a dish should be like cuss words in a conversation; enough to enhance the conversation but not enough to overwhelm it. I like some heat and flavor but turning oneself into a dripping mess of sweat, draining mucous and discomfort for all around you is simply not enjoyable.
“…blisters on their anus following a drunken night out feasting on super-hot food. The patient was female.”
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The entire taint was left burn scarred and the periphery of the vulva was a smoking hole of despair, never to see joy again.
1.6 million Scoville? The pepper spray I carry is only 2million.
So spray some straight into your mouth, for the complete experience.
I grew up in New Mexico and I enjoy a good Vindaloo. (Trivia: “vindaloo” isn’t an Indian word, but a loanword from the Portuguese “carne de vinha d’alhos” which sailors prepared from pork preserved in wine/vinegar.) I’ve even dabbled in the super-hots. I have bragging rights!
There are three reasons to eat spicy food: culinary experience, bragging rights, or as a recreational drug. The guy who bred the Reaper, Ed Currie, is a hardcore addict. He eats the damn things, every day, right off the vine. His breeding program is worth multi-millions, and he has peppers which the public knows nothing of. When a new pepper in England topped the reaper, Currie instantly replied with something much hotter. By spectrograph analysis, Currie has grown peppers which consist of 30% pure capsaicin by weight, which is like having a rattlesnake that is three-tenths venom: not stable in natural evolution.
I have a lot of respect for a maniac like Ed Currie, and a lot of respect for anyone who is willing to broaden his ideas of culinary fun. Bragging rights, on the other hand, is a pretty stupid reason to do anything.
No idea how hot the Thai calamari I had the day before leaving the Philippines, but it still did nothing for the cubed tire rubber of the calamari. I had the center seat of the center aisle in a 747 flying non-stop to SFO, between a returning Peace Corps lady on one side and a missionary lady on the other, sweating profusely, asking for both of them to turn their air on full and aim it at me, while every 10 minutes was rushing to the bathroom. As far as I could tell, my anus was permanently burned and blistered by the red-hot barbed cock of Satan, and every emergency run to relieve myself made it worse. Mein Gott in Himmel!!! It hurt for days, and the menu only said “spicy”, not “days-long trip to hell to be sodomized by Lucifer”. Never again! Neither calamari nor anything Thai or Indian described as “spicy”, again, though I love spicy Tex-Mex. Never!
An acquaintance of mine once picked up some dried ghost peppers – bhut jolokia – at a spice store in Chicago. Gave me one. I like hot & spicy, but knew about the intensity of the ghost peppers, so I took a rarely used electric grinder for coffee beans and ran the ghost pepper in it until it was powdered. Poured the powder into a cleaned up sugar sprinkles container. the next time I made jalapeno burgers I very sparingly sprinkled some of the ghost pepper powder on the burger. It added a smoky flavor (not from my mouth burning, thank God), and was still very hot. Did it one other time for some curious friends at a cook out, but the container is sitting undisturbed in my spice cabinet now. Couldn’t pay me enough to suffer through eating anything made with Reaper! I like my internal organ just the way they are.
I grew a Carolina Reaper and ate it. I minced it fine and used it in my seven-day salad bowl. (60-70 ounces, portioned into seven daily servings.) I could taste it, but nothing terrible happened.
For me, the proper level of spicy heat is to take a chili pepper and wave it above the pot – from the floor above.