This. There's a localish to me Thai place that is fantastic and my friends go there with a mind to see if the cook has finally made something hot enough that they feel it. For the record, I can get half way through a 3 before my mouth is fire. The hot the woman who runs the place makes for them isn't on the menu. I don't even know if they taste food any more, seems bizarre to me.
A 3? Like 3-alarm? That's MILD for Thai in my experience. I've had some green curries that were tasty but holy everloving shit they were hot. Reds are a little less insane, panang curries are about in my Goldilocks zone, and yellow curries are pretty mild but very tasty.
A bowl of Ichiran in tokyo sets you back about the equivalent of $9 USD. In New York or San Francisco, you pay TWENTY. FUCKING. DOLLARS. I'd sooner educate myself in the Japanese language, buy a plane ticket, and go to Tokyo. It'd be infinitely safer and less disgusting, too.
Just what their three is. It's not mild and that was just their Basil Fried Rice. The place is different from most other Thai I've had, it's not very sauce heavy and I mostly get their Pad Thai, I haven't even tried their curries. Their three is like a real slow build up, you don't really feel it at first and then it's just fucking burning about half way through and I'm no slouch on spice. I usually go with 1 these days, but mostly because the food is so damn good I want to enjoy it.
Arbitrary spice scales kind of screw with me but... spicy basil fried rice? Sounds kind of interesting. Weird, but interesting. Pad thai is pretty good though, as long as they're using tamarind in the sauce (local place has great curries and good pad see ew but their pad thai is downright bland).
It's something else, not sure how arbitrary it is, but Lek uses as fresh as she can get Thai chili and has three level above five you can ask for, and then the level she experiments on my friends with. She sells the sauces she fries stuff in at the local grocery store, I'll have to check next time I'm in and see if she's got that in there. It's anything but bland.
I always put a little bit of hot English mustard in with my mac and cheese, it's a good combo. Though I don't think it'd be very nice with American or French mustard.
It's the American desire for sensation at all costs. And I actually like spicy food, but I'd like to taste something other than capsaicin. Ironically, they went from being so non-spicy that they'd never scare away Midwesterners to being incredibly spicy.
Avocado is good, but it's essentially plant butter. Shoving it into things in order to raise the fat content is the new bacon on everything.
And would you like a vessel of hot nourishment water or a plate of vegetative matter to go with your caloric intake matrix today, Xir?
Eat it sat on the pavement outside your house.
I can say from experience that most "Cajun" restaurants outside of Louisiana have practically nothing in common with real Cajun food.
...what the fuck.
In the US it tends to be the pizza joints that do it, and it's basically the same salad:
