Stupid Hot
Back when I was working grocery, there was this craze that swept across the nation that involved hot sauces. For years and years the only sauces you could get were Frank’s, Tabasco, and a few of the smaller companies that weren’t nationwide yet like Texas Pete. These sauces were great food additives that would spice up your salad dressings, marinades, pizzas, tacos, bloody Mary’s, or whatever you liked to add a little zip to.
But then something changed. Somebody decided it was manly to burn the hell out of your mouth with hot sauces and hot peppers. Chili eating contests were at every county fair and every contestant tried to “out hot” each other. All well and good. They all used pretty much the same sauces to liven up their soups and nobody went cosmic on the kinds of food additives that they used.
Enter Dave. In the midst of this craze, Dave invented Dave’s Insanity Sauce. This stuff the distinction of raising the bar when it comes to spices for food. A bottle of the stuff stresses that it is not to be uses like other hot sauces, but rather as a “food additive” which is like telling a junky that Oxycontin patches aren’t to be used as a heroin substitute, but rather a pain killer. Forever, the idiots who had latched on to the hot sauce hysteria were changed, now becoming zombies with sore tongues and rusted out assholes.
Great. For the span of a few years, many of these sauce companies made a mint. And during this time, the habanero pepper became chic to use in food. I liken it to the pet rock phase during the seventies where every idiot had to have “the next big stupid thing.” Invisible dogs, short shorts, tie-dyes, patches of every type on your jeans, jeans jackets, bellbottoms, what-have-you…
The phase blew over and everybody went back to being not so macho and eating normal, bland food. Shelf space devoted to designer hot foods was decreased and many of the more obscure sauces were either bought up by large food conglomerates or they were discontinued out of existence. Overnight, it seemed as if the fad was over. I myself was sorry to see the trend die the way it did because I was a fan of a spicy bloody Mary…however, I managed to make do with plain old horseradish, black pepper, and Tabasco, so no harm was really done in the end.
Now here comes the story. Big fast food (like most of the other “big industries” who try this sort of business ploy) is dumb enough to think that stupid-hot foods are marketable enough to foray back into the land once owned by Scotch Bonnet and is still trying to milk the hot sauce craze for any last dollar that remains in your average pepper-fiend’s pocket. They still think that if they zest that sandwich, taco, or chicken wing up to ludicrous levels, they have opened a whole new world of cash flow and have tapped into heretofore unknown market that they managed to miss the first time around. And although I am probably wrong about this because mankind often proves me an idiot, I think there is no way foods like this can make a dent in the industry.
Yes, the market is there, hot spicy foods sell quite a bit and make billions for the companies that produce them. But I am not chatting here about normal level spicy foods; the kind that can be enjoyed and then forgotten about once you have washed them down with a glass of beer. These foods are (pun intended) a flash in the pan.
Now, on with the story.
I test food. Currently, I get a call from a local food research company every few weeks and they ask me if I would like to participate in a food tasting test. Sure! I always say, and I am almost always excited to do food tests for them. I like to try new things and I like the money they pay me. It’s a win/win situation. They win too. They get my (obviously) incredible talent for telling them in no uncertain terms my honest opinion of the crap they put in front of me. Also, by the looks of some of my fellow food testers, they get a more reliable type of person to show up, on time, without a cell phone ringing, to test their food.
This time around the telephone call told me that I had to show up at an international fast food companies headquarters and today’s test subject happened to be a spicy chicken habanero sandwich. Fine, I like spicy chicken and there happens to be a sandwich which I really like that was supposed to be similar. I’d get fifty bucks to eat a sandwich, all I had to do was drive out the HQ, eat the sandwich, and answer about fifty questions on a form.
I arrive at the R & D laboratory and there is a spring in my step as I make my way across the parking lot and into the facility. Like I said, I am usually excited to try new things, even if nine times out of ten, they turn out to be a bust. I sign in, sit down in my cubicle and the sandwich is put in front of me by a techy looking person wearing a full laboratory get up that included goggles and a breathing mask. I should have taken it as an omen, but I was too busy eyeballing the chicken burger appealingly laid out before me. Later it was explained to me that the cooks and kitchen techs were using pepper extracts in the kitchens that were in concentrations so hot the workers needed protection from the fumes. Give me a break, the sandwich can’t that hot and the trick is to wash your hands…
Now, let me just tell you something about how I go about testing food. They usually give you a packet to go through to answer your questions and the questions themselves are pretty straight forward. “Was the food’s texture appealing? Please answer on a scale of one to five…” or “Was the aftertaste noticeable? Please answer YES, I noticed a distinct aftertaste or NO, the food went down smoother than a California sunset…” You get the idea; they want to know as much of your opinion about the food they are serving you as they possibly can, without coming straight out and asking you if you hated it or not. Pretty simple.
Not so fast there, this is ME testing the food, and most of the time, they give you a small area to write a bit about how you felt. Hehe, feel sorry for them? I don’t! I usually write a small novel in the space provided and I lower the boom on a test subject if I don’t like it. Sometimes I give the food a good write up because it has something special about it, but most of the time the food is from some fast food place and its either garbage outright or it is a re-hash of some of their older garbage.
So back to the SPICY CHICKEN HABANERO SANDWICH. It looks harmless enough. Just a chicken sandwich with a slab of pepper-jack cheese, some lettuce, a tomato slice, and this pleasant smelling sauce that is barely dripping off the sides of the meat on to the bun. I’m chewing my sandwich and I initially noticed a smoky spicy flavor that I like. It’s got a really good “mouth feel” as they say in the food testing industry. Then the sandwich turns all sorts of Satan on me. The pepper relish sauce, once so eye catching and scrumptious looking, is akin to napalm as it is just beginning to ignite. The blinding flavor spreads out all over my tongue and its creeping down the back of my mouth to my throat. You can actually feel yourself getting heartburn and the nuclear squirts both at the same time while you are chewing this food! Reflexively, my esophagus tries to seize up.
Yes, this is how habanero peppers work. They are the sneaky bastards of the chili pepper family. At first, they come on all sweet, almost like a bell pepper. Next, they provide you with a tiny hint of heat, as if kissing your face with the wafting vapors of a smoked jalapeño freshly removed from a grill. Finally, they backstab your tongue and throat with a rape of heat so intense and shocking, you will find yourself gagging and reaching for the bottle of water. Too bad water don’t work sucka…but you knew that. Evidently the “food technicians” didn’t know this simple fact either as they had provided water in case the testers had trouble with the heat of the food. Dumb dumb dumb! Milk is what they should have put out there…or Milk of Magnesia.
I can barely taste the bun, the toppings, the cheese, or the chicken over this army of Sherman-like relish that is violently and destructively marching across the Atlanta of my tongue on its way to the sea of my stomach. I manage to swallow the first few bites but I have to choke back tears and reach for a pile of napkins to blow my exploding nose. This isn’t a sandwich! It’s like being maced by a cop! I rush through the rest of the questionnaire and try to make a B-line to my car. I think I have some antacids in the glove compartment.
As I was walking out of the place, I picked up my money and noticed that several people were openly tearing up. A few were gagging. Just from the general look of all the testers, I can pretty much say that they need to tone the sandwich down a lot, or forget selling it to large groups of people. It may be one of those “limited time only” deals that appeal to idiots who need to prove their manhood to their kids…because this sort of “one up” heat would only appeal to lower life forms or second graders.
Why the hell is there this sort of attitude towards hot food? Yeah man, I gotta eat hotter food than the next guy. I may come off sounding like total wimp here, but I have to say, there should be a level of heat that should not be allowed to be crossed. But before you write me off as a candy assed prissy girl, I would like to remind you that these types of foods are additives, not to be consumed straight! For God sake there is a warning on Dave’s bottle! What kind of idiot wants to wipe his ass with asbestos toilet paper? It’s not “hot food” for the sake of trying new flavors or adding some vim to your diet, its “hot food” for the sake of out-scalding the next drunk down the row of seats at the bar. I’m reminded of that scene in “Lethal Weapon” where Mr. Joshua holds his hand over the lighted lighter to prove how tough he is and how “hard” their crew is.
Mr. Endo, if I recall correctly, has to “have a look” at Mr. Joshua’s wounds…
I cannot see a profitable segment of the population actually liking this sandwich. On the questionnaire, I actually asked them if they had tasted their own product…it was that hot. Anybody thinking this sort of food would make money is either a president of a company, or a complete moron who, in their time off, is into body modification that involves large metal hooks. The only reason for making a sandwich this hot is to appeal to a level of idiots just below Cro Magnon man.
And if you are still nay-saying me and telling me that I am a total wuss for thinking that some hot foods can be “too hot” then I suggest you go out and eat yourself silly. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when your proctologist suggests an anal transplant.
