White People Spicy

The Midwest, 2000-something

Perhaps it is my smallness, my femaleness, my whiteness, or my Midwesterness, but I cannot convince people that I want spicy food when I order it. 

I have had this problem in the US and abroad. 

To give you an idea of what my spice tolerance is, I will point to the cultural reference of Hot Ones, the show in which celebrities eat ten chicken wings in ascending order of spiciness and answer well researched questions. 

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Spiciness is based on the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU), which is a nonsense scale based on the amount of water needed to dilute the capsaicin so three of five human taste testers cannot detect it in water. Tomfoolery aside, this is the only spiciness scale I have for reference. 

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The hot sauce I keep in my fridge is the ninth most spicy on Hot Ones. Many celebrities are a snotty, semi-coherent mess by this ninth wing. It has a 699,000 SHU. 

No, I did not fat finger that number. My everyday SHU tolerance is 699,000. I do not know what SHU is needed to make me a snotty, semi-coherent mess. 

Sometimes a girl just needs to have her food hurt.

Case in point. Back in 2000-something, I was tickled when a new ethnic restaurant opened near campus. In the early 2000s, even Mexican restaurants were not ubiquitous in The Midwest. If your town was lucky, you maybe had a bar that served burgers, a bar that sold old-timey foods (braunschweiger sandwiches, pickled eggs, smoked trout, etc.), a bowling alley with pizza, and a Subway. 

You understand why I was tickled. 

I’d like to believe that I was one of the restaurant’s first customers. My stomach does not let me pass by wafting Chinese Five Spice without investigating, and I had walked past this previously odorless spot everyday. Something culinary was going down here, and my nose and stomach were already colluding with my wallet before my brain caught up. 

The owners hadn’t hung a sign out yet, so I wasn’t exactly sure what type of delicious I was going to be consuming. Chinese? Thai? Vietnamese? Cambodian? It didn’t matter. It already beat my other options of a Hawaiian pizza, a grilled brick-and-ham on pumpernickel, or the Sodexo Special from the Commons. 

Lights were on, but there weren’t any hours or open signs posted on the door. I walked in, hoping they were open. (Light trespassing in a closed business establishment wouldn’t have gotten me shot back then).

The menu posted over the counter was in Hanzi and English. I was in a Chinese restaurant. Huzzah! There was a counter worker, so they were also open and I was not trespassing. Double Huzzah!

The counter worker spoke limited English, but it was a thousand times better than my no Mandarin. I ordered the mapo tofu.

“Spicy?”

“Yes, I like spicy.” (Me thinking, why would anyone order mild mapo tofu? Can you do that? Is that like ordering a peanut butter sandwich without peanuts?) 

The food came out quickly. I split my chopsticks, made a chopstick rest with the wrapper, and dug in. 

To my disappointment, it was Midwestern spicy. Maybe a hot pepper had been dangled over the wok. Maybe there was an extra shake of black pepper in the dish. I couldn’t tell. My taste buds detected flavor, but no heat. The flavor was great, but there was no assault on my senses. 

Being from and in the Midwest, I was not going to complain about my mild dish. That is very unMidwesternly. The Midwesternly thing to do is eat what you’re given. If you’re not happy with what you’re given, you don’t go back. 

Being the only patron of the restaurant, the counter worker was paying attention to me. And me being the only patron of the restaurant, I could feel the counter worker paying attention to me. 

I don’t know what tipped him off, but he slowly walked over to me. 

“You like?”

“The flavor is good.” 

I hoped he would leave the inquisition at that. I hate waiters asking me how everything is. Truth is, I would never bring up something negative. Their discomfort at receiving a negative comment would make me uncomfortable too, and then I’d spend the rest of the meal feeling bad that I made the waiter feel bad.  

“Spicy ok?”

“It’s ok. I like more spice.”

He hesitated for a minute. He was looking for words. 

“You spicy or me spicy?” He touched his nose as he gestured to himself. 

It was my turn to hesitate. What was he trying to ask me? A pregnant pause later, I got it.

“You spicy.” I responded. 

“Ok. Me spicy.” 

He snatched my plate like he had just realized he had served me a turd. 

A fresh mapo tofu returned with dried red chili bits and thinly sliced Thai bird chilis perched on top, which had been absent in the first dish. I don't know if this was the chef trying to prove a point or this is legitimately what "me spicy" meant.

The counter worker nodded when he put down my plate. 

I smiled back. I took my first bite. It was perfect. My lips were singed and my taste buds were cursing me.

“Me spicy ok?”

“Perfect.”