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PaperclipPerfector  11hr ago (text post)   475 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 9, 2026

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Can someone explain US spiciness levels to me?

I recently tried Dave’s Hot Chicken. I have been meaning to try it for a while ever since they went viral. There was a bogo deal on UberEats so I ordered 1 Reaper, 1 ultra hot, 2 Hot, and then I guess a deliver mistake got me 2 mild tenders and later saw on a receipt I got a DoorDash order so I had that for lunch the next day. Here is my spice ranking Reaper - death 10 min of pain Ultra hot - taste nothing Hot - taste nothing Mild - taste nothing

This seems normal for a lot of American joints. A lot of the spiciness levels I can barely taste a difference and then they sometimes I have a crazy level. Why is this? I came up with two models:

  1. They are getting spicier. Medium is 3k Scoville, hot is 10k scoville, ultra hot is 25k scoville. Human variance for tasting spice varies widely so it’s actually very hard to create hot varieties for the customer to agree is hot. And myself personally has built up a tolerance of let’s call it 50k scoville before I taste something (I’m making these numbers up). And then it’s easy to just dial up a 300k scoville reaper like level.

  2. The restaurants lie and most Americans have little spice tolerance so all varieties of hot are generally similar but they do the tight range of spiciness level because customers like thinking they had something spicy.

Only time I’ve seen this broken would be at authentic Chinese spots. Where I could order let’s call it level 3 spicy. Where I remember a waitress warning me that this is Chinese hot and not white boy American hot. I ordered that and loved it.

I often find myself wanting to order something spicy that will have a pleasant pain but it seems fairly rare in American coded restaurants.

Last time I went to Dave's I couldn't finish the "hot" chicken tenders they were so spicy with my nose and eyes running. I think your spice tolerance is probably really high compared to most Americans.

A big problem is there are a lot of people who are just assholes. They'll order the highest spice level to try to show off in front of their friends, then they'll throw a fit if it's too hot.

Ya this feels right. Especially paired with person above. Maybe 5-10% of population likes some real heat. Which is 100% a big enough market to serve, but then you would have a lot of people complaining and/or not coming back because they ordered ultra hot and ultra hot was actually designed for a person with a palette that likes spice.

This is my personal average restaurant experience of the spiciness scales in the US.

Rating Thai place example Indian place example BWW example
🌶️🌶️🌶️ Crying while eating (only available if ordered with a majority-brown group) Pray for your butthole Vindaloo (only available if ordered with a majority-brown group) Blazin'® or Wild®
🌶️🌶️ Ordered "spicy" with a majority-white group Madras Mango Habanero™
🌶️ Labeled "spicy" with no waitress warning Tikka Masala Asian Zing®
White people: black pepper is too spicy Not labeled "spicy" Korma Honey BBQ

I skipped a bunch of the BWW spiciness scale, but everything below Asian Zing on that scale is hardly spicy, IMO.

I (a Finn) once made the near-fatal mistake of ordering a "two chili" dish in an Indian restaurant in England. BAD mistake. After a while I was sweating in pain and it looked so bad the waiter asked me several times if I was ok. I finally got some relief when I asked if they had any milk (it was not on the list) and I will never forget the look of pity on his face when he said "Of course, sir, just a moment". Next morning was pretty bad but nowhere near as bad as eating it was.

The only (non-novelty) food I've had that made me feel physically sick from the spiciness was at an Indian restaurant. We were having dinner with a group of Indian classmates. I don't know if they told the waiter something as a form of hazing or if that was just the normal spice level. I'm pretty accustomed to spicy food, so I managed to eat it, but the next morning was slightly worrying.

My chili tolerance has always been limited more by the physical irritation of mucous membranes than the pain. It's a whole different thing to try to keep eating when your head is clogging up compared to when it just hurts.

As Americans' exposure to Latin American and South Asian spicy food has increased, both customer tastes and restaurant offerings have adjusted at wildly different rates. What you're describing seems particularly common in rural areas without much immigration from spicy foos countries. Most of the population has a weak spice tolerance, so most options are very mild, and the only people who want real heat are the sort of sadists who like to brag about their highest scoville level, so there's one extreme option hardly anyone actually orders.

Meanwhile my local wing place has like 16 sauces/rubs that allow you to pretty meticulously dial in the exact level of spice you want. Most places I've been generally have fairly clear differences between mild, medium, and hot.

This checks out. Dave’s Hot Chicken went from instagram to national roll out fairly quickly so I guess it makes sense for them to offer a menu that fits the majority of Americas low spice tolerance. Though I thought the ultra hot would hit a little bit. Reaper was pure sadists.

Last time I went to a local joint their hog was nothing, but they had a jerk sauce that appropriately hit. 10-20s of pain that could be toned down with some water. It felt like work getting thru 10 but still enjoyable. My sinuses had been cleaned out.

Dave’s being essentially a choice between nothing or sadists isn’t what I’m looking for. I do like to go sadists maybe once every 6 months to a year, but most of the time when I’m looking for spice I just want to taste it and have a good sinus clean up.

Por que no los dos? I think that America in general now has more of an interest in spicier peppers, giving some truth to 1, but also that 2 has generally been true for my entire life, hence the warning that your waitress gives you. More generally, back when I could reliably tolerate genuinely spicy food, I would frequently receive warnings similar to the one you received in the Chinese restaurant yourself. One of the Indian places that I liked to frequent had both a hot and an, "Indian hot," level of spice, and another did a sliding scale of 1-10 on every dish. I can remember the chef coming to speak to us, impressed that we could actually tolerate food at the level of a 10.

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