So you know how Thai restaurants usually have a scale of heat for when you order? Usually ranging from “mild” to “Thai-hot.” Years ago after getting COVID and losing my sense of taste I turned to excessively spicy foods. I built up my tolerance to the point I usually have to ask someone to taste my cooking before I serve it or else I’ll be at the table happily eating while my dinner guests are gasping for breath. So going to a Thai place I always ask for my food “extra Thai hot.” Well one night when trying a new place I asked my server how hot they could make my meal and the server says to me as his face shifts to empathetically dreadful concern “We have a secret spice level named after our owner, Susan. It’s ‘Susan hot.’’’ So ask for my phat phrik khing “Susan hot.” My sever reminds me that there will be no refund if I do not like it and walks to the kitchen to put in my order. I anxiously wait for my meal. At some point the ventilation hoods in the kitchen can no longer contain the aroma of the absurd amount of chilies frying in some unseen wok. My eyes begin to water. I hear coughing from the kitchen. A patron comments on the hellish smell as she grabs her to-go order from the host stand. Before my mind can calculate the pain my body was beginning to endure the server places my dish in front me; it’s covered with a steel lid while my fellow table-mates’ dishes are open. My friends are given small bowls with perfect little mounds of jasmine rice; I am given a mixing bowl full of rice. I place my hand on the steel lid and glance at my compatriots as they shuffle their chairs as far away as the diminutive table will allow. I lift the cover and am instantly hit with the pungent humidity of what I would later name “Weaponized Pork.” The sauce is not the usual amber hue. The sauce is not red. The sauce is dark brown. Before I can even get to the sauce I have to contend with a liberal dusting of coarse ground chili powder. I take my first mouthful; a slice of rich pork, a wilted leaf of basil, and a tender yet toothsome green bean. I am immediately hit struck by the flavor. More so a lack thereof. I do not taste the familiar embrace of the vibrant coriander, the citral lemongrass, or the funky fish sauce. I get no subtle sweetness. Damnit, I cannot even taste the pork. This meal is different. It eschews flavor and texture and assaults the senses with an immediate and expanding inferno. I take my second bite. I take my third bite. Then the fourth and fifth. I am not aware of my surroundings. The ones I love blur from my vision. I o to see shapes and motion. I can barely remember my own name. An opiate-like high overcomes my faculties devoid of any euphoria. The sixth bite makes way for the seventh. I begin to see the metallic bottom of my bucket of rice. Eighth bite. Then the ninth. I begin to shovel food-like substance into my mouth. Every time my mouth opens, a fresh gust of oxygen hits my squishy mouthparts, generating an oral-backdraft that only intensifies the flames within my toothy crucible. My rice is gone. My cup runneth empty. I drink from my friends cup; the diet cola cannot smother the heat. Eventually, I prevail. I somehow manage to chew and swallow my last bites. The food is gone but the fire remains. I may have finished my meal but I was defeated. I did not enjoy a single moment of my mastication and I escaped from hell a lesser man. My server appears to me as if formed from the haze within my vision. He says some words to me. I say some words back. He goes out to the front step and talks to the old woman chain-smoking Marlboros. She rests her still smoldering cigarette, and joins the server as he walks inside. She greets me at my table and introduces herself “Hello, I am Susan.” She asks if I enjoyed my meal. I lie and tell her “yes it was great.” She thanks me and my party and strolls away to the front step again to reunite with her cigarette. My friends pack their food away in containers. My server brings us all separate checks. My bill was $22.37. The monetary cost for “Susan Hot.” submitted by /u/Prince_Breakfast [link] [comments]
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