This article first appeared in Louisville Magazine's EATS Dining Guide 1999
© 1999 Robin Garr
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First your tongue tingles. Then a rush of warmth spreads through your mouth and fills your head. Sweat breaks out on your upper lip and forehead. Finally, your nose starts running.
You're eating hot peppers, and you feel just great.
Let me tell you why:
The active ingredient in hot chile peppers is called capsaicin (pronounced "cap-SAY-uh-sin"), a flavorful substance that prompts your trigeminal nerve to release "substance P," a chemical messenger that tells your brain something's burning. The brain responds, scientists say, by producing endorphins -- natural painkillers that generate a sense of well-being. It's something like a "runner's high," without the exercise.
It feels like your mouth is on fire, but hot peppers can't hurt you. "It might irritate an ulcer if somebody's sensitive, but I don't think we've ever made a run of that type," says Major Ira Dyer, a hot-stuff fancier and veteran of Louisville Emergency Medical Services runs.
Hot peppers need a long, hot summer to ripen, so they're found in the world's tropical regions. This is why hot stuff is commonplace in the cuisines of steamy spots like Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, and the Cajun country and barbecue belt of the southern United States, while British and Swedish menus aren't known for their heat.
To find out what's hot in the Louisville area, my wife and I explored a dozen ethnic eateries in search of the fieriest food in town. We also tested a variety of liquid antidotes to cool the heat.
Here, listed in order of spiciness (more peppers = more heat) is what we found:
The Squid Bok Kum
at Asiana Restaurant,
2039 Frankfort Ave.
"What's hot and spicy and good?" I ask. The server chuckles and whispers, "Squid." A lunch order of Bok Kum ($5.50) brings a heaping mound of crisp-textured strips of Captain Nemo's nemesis, stir-fried with shredded carrots, scallions and onion in an alarming bright-red sauce flecked with bits of red chile pepper. I take a tentative nibble, smile, then take a larger bite; before long I'm stoking it in with only an occasional pause for breath. It's so hot that fire is coming out my nose and my ears, and I can't stop eating. Hot and sweet and smoky and salty flavors all mingle in an intoxicating combo. White rice helps keep the heat under control, along with plenty of water and iced tea. Still, I need to blow my nose. Twice. My mouth and lips are burning, as if I had accidentally touched them with a match, and the endorphins are running. I love this.
Beef Chop Chae ($4.95) is well within my wife's slightly lower heat tolerance. Deliciously smoky, paper-thin slices of grilled beef nestle in a bed of broth-soaked cellophane noodles mingled with shredded carrot, scallions, cabbage and enough black pepper to add spice but not fire.
Every meal comes with Korean relishes: Kimchee, pickled Chinese cabbage in a red-pepper sauce, is hot and tangy and surprisingly seductive, hot enough to make fire come out your nose but not your ears. Squares of pressed tofu are marinated in a milder sauce; you're also served cooler choices of sweet-sour bean sprouts, sweet-sour shredded radish, and boiled potato marinated in a sweet bean sauce.
The Thit Ba Chi Tom Nau
at Vietnam Kitchen,
5339 Mitscher Ave.
You'll get past the downscale look of this South End storefront restaurant once you realize that there's a genius in the kitchen, crafting delicacies with more than casual attention. Not just one-dimensional spicy heat, but depth and complexity, along with balance and subtlety, make every dish a pleasing surprise.
Bun Ga Xao Xa ($5.35), stir-fried chicken with peanuts, came atop a mound of rice noodles and sported a warm but not incendiary heat that played counterpoint to aromatic scallions, onions and lemongrass. Thit Ba Chi Tom Nau ($7.75) consisted of thin-sliced beef and a generous serving of shrimp, tossed with onions and laced with fiery spice. It had a delicious smoky scent from stir-frying in a red-hot wok. Served with rice, it was scorching enough to make my nose run.
Want still more heat? Pour on the Vietnamese sriracha sauce and sambal oelek, a dark-red, seeded concoction that superficially resembles Vince Staten's "Legal Limit" sauce (see below) but makes the Kentucky-born product seem wimpish.
Steamed rice and rice noodles offered heat relief, as did Che Dau Trang, a sweet, sticky rice dessert made with coconut milk and black-eyed peas ($1.50), and Cafe Sua Da ($1.80), the Vietnamese answer to Thai iced coffee.
The Legal Limit Hot Sauce
at Vince Staten's Old Time Barbecue,
9291 US Highway 42.
Together with Courier-Journal features editor and former restaurant critic Greg Johnson, Staten wrote the book on barbecue, Real Barbecue, and the fare at this Prospect eatery is, to give it the book's highest accolade, "as good as I ever ate."
Following the principle established by Bo Carter in the classic blues lyric, "Pigmeat is what I crave," I almost always go for Staten's pork, a classic of the genre, tender and smoky, served naked to gussy up as you like it.
That's easy to do at Staten's, where six barbecue sauces are placed on every table and dozens more from around the nation are on sale for $3.95.
Legal Limit allegedly requires that customers sign an authorized waiver before tasting it. I hate to admit this, but the sauce is too hot for me to enjoy. A thick, dark reddish-brown potion, it's laden with chile-pepper seeds and smacks your taste buds with a painful blast of fire.
Staten's second-hottest sauce, and my favorite, is West Texas Hot Sauce, a tomato-based concoction that's thick, sweet and hot enough to induce an endorphin rush. North Carolina and Memphis sauces are thin and vinegar-based; they're hot-sour and tangy with a hint of black pepper. Texas Sweet Sauce is tomato-based, thick and sweet with the heat turned down low, and Jack Sauce, the mildest on the premises, makes up for the lack of fire with a sweet, flavorful dash of Jack Daniel's.
The traditional drink with barbecue is old-fashioned iced tea.
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The Doro Wat Cafe Kilimanjaro entices with a reggae beat and delicious equatorial dishes from the Caribbean, Africa and South America. Heat levels range from ho-hum to Yowza!, which is what you'll say when you try Doro Wat ($5), the classic Ethiopian chicken barbecue. Chicken parts are simmered into submission in a dark-red, savory sauce that warms the back of your throat with a pleasant, lasting heat. Turn on the afterburners, if you dare, with a squeeze-bottle shot of Kilimanjaro's Calypso hot sauce, a thick, red concoction that brings tears to your eyes and raises havoc in your sinuses. Doro Wat comes with traditional Ethiopian injera, a thin, spongy flatbread that's just right for sopping up the sauce and the heat.
Goat curry ($5) is mild but subtle, a rich broth with potatoes and carrots and just a touch of tropical fire.
"Tropical iced tea" (90 cents) blends sweetness and a pleasant mix of apple and other fruit flavors to quench the flames.
The Broccoli Curry
at Shalimar Indian Restaurant,
1820 S. Hurstbourne Pkwy.
(Hunnington Place Shopping Center).
Shalimar's filling lunch buffet ($6.49) offers rice and naan (Indian oven bread), a half-dozen entrées, fruit and salad and Indian desserts. Be careful, there's no indication whether a dish is mild (chicken tikka, tandoori chicken), medium-spicy (lentils, known as dal, and vegetable fritters, called pakora) or fiery (curried peas and potatoes and broccoli-and-onions). The latter is one of the hottest items in town, long-cooked broccoli florets and onions suffused with a hot, bitter burn that lingers at the back of your throat. Raita, shredded cucumbers in yogurt, helps cool the peppery bite. Better yet, try a lassi ($2.50). This traditional Indian drink, whipped yogurt over ice, is available salty or sweet and does a good job of soothing the pain.
The Pork With Jalapeño
at The Emperor of China,
210 Holiday Manor Shopping Center.
A peppery appetizer and two spicy entrées make up a dinner fit for a fire-breathing dragon: Shredded chicken with hot sauce ($4.50) features tender chicken, cool cucumber and a pleasantly warm but not-at-all-painful touch of hot-sour spice. Pork with Szechuan string beans ($7.50) offers a generous mound of crisp-tender beans dotted with crispy bits of ground pork, bathed in a sweet-hot sauce that accumulates in the bottom of the serving dish, making the last serving a lot hotter than the first. Pork with jalapeño ($8.25) blends stir-fried shredded pork, fresh sliced jalapeño peppers and green onions in a light brown sauce. It's delicious, but spicy enough that the faint-hearted should steer clear.
Hot tea and iced water and steamed white rice keep the heat under control.
The Stuffed Jalapeños
at Joe's Crab Shack,
131 River Road.
You'll find jalapeño poppers all over town, but few as fine as Joe's, where an order of stuffed jalapeños ($3.50) brings a half-dozen sizable beauties -- fresh, dark-green and fiery -- stuffed with a tasty combination of minced crab, shrimp and cream cheese, lightly breaded and crisply fried. It's billed as an appetizer but is more than enough to make a light meal or to share.
The Chile Relleno
at El Nopalito,
4028 Taylorsville Road,
and the Torta con Lengua
at La Tapatia,
8106 Preston Highway.
One entry each from my two favorite Mexican restaurants:
The chile relleno puts Hikes Point's El Nopalito in the hot-stuff-lovers' hall of fame. A fresh, roasted ancho chile packs a spicy punch, nicely offset by molten cheese, with light, crisp breading adding to the delight. Both red and green El Yucateca hot sauces are on hand if you want even more heat. Recommended beverage choices: iced tea or cold beer.
At La Tapatia, the torta's the thing: These wonderful Mexican sandwiches feature your choice (which varies with availability) of beef carne asada, pork carnitas or lengua (tongue), piled high on crisp-crusted, tender torta loaves and topped with lettuce, tomato, sour cream and lots of jalapeños. Add green-chile salsa or the thick (and dangerously hot) red sauce from the squeeze bottles if you want to give it even more authority. To drink: Try the sweet-tart Jarritos Mexican soft drinks served here in several flavors, including grapefruit and guava.
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The Cajun Combos NOTE: Pete's Cajun 99 has closed, but Pete Mak now hosts similar fare at Beau Weevil, a few blocks away at 1318 Bardstown Road.
The atmosphere at this Highlands joint is funky and fun, sort of frat-house Gothic with moosehead and Mardi Gras trinkets; and the food is delicious.
The Cajun Combo (samples of three entrées, $8.95 for lunch) or the Mini Combo (a two-entrée sampler, $7.95) offers the best way to taste everything. Two of us worked our way through crawfish etouffée, an earthy stew with a medium-brown, floury roux and a generous portion of "mudbugs" over white rice; a jambalaya of chicken and smoked sausage baked with rice and boasting a haunting aromatic smokiness; red beans and rice, straightforward and hearty; and gumbo, chicken and shrimp over rice in a scorching, spicy roux, almost black but held short of burning by a master roux-maker's hand.
All the dishes showed similar heat levels, not painful but maintaining a gentle background glow.
Drinks? Iced tea ($1) in an oversize glass, along with Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager ($3.25), taken directly from the long-neck bottle as tradition demands.
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The Green Curry We asked what's hot at Louisville's original Thai restaurant, and the server recommended Kao Pad Gra Prao ($6) and the curry of the day, green curry($5.50).
The former is a traditional dish that's usually done as a stir-fry but that Thai Siam renders as a fried rice. It was crisply fried, hot-sweet and smoky, with little bits of chicken, green onions, basil leaves and only moderate heat. The curry was a little warmer, with bite-size chicken pieces, chunks of baby eggplant, onions and a sprinkle of frozen peas in a thin, pale-green curry sauce. It was spicy enough to leave a tangy heat along the sides of your tongue, but throttled way back by Thai standards.
Thai iced coffee ($2) -- sweet, strong black coffee over ice with heavy cream floating on top -- makes a tasty accompaniment to Thai fare.
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Good wine goes well with just about everything, but with fiery food it's a pain.
A real pain.
Quaff a gulp of wine after a bite of chile peppers or hot sauce and you're literally pouring alcohol on a burn. This is not my idea of fun.
Surprisingly, even a cooling draught of cold water or iced tea doesn't do much to douse a chile-induced fire. The active ingredient in hot foods is an oily substance, and oil and water don't ... well, you know. Water and water-based liquids spread the oil around your taste buds, but they do a poor job of washing it away.
Beer is a little better, because it's not so high in alcohol, but more important, its carbonation seems to scrub away the hot-pepper oils more effectively than non-fizzy beverages do. Sparkling wine has a similar effect, making bubbly the one vinous exception to the rule about no wine with hot stuff.
But the real fire-extinguishing secret, known to hot-sauce aficionados around the equator from India to Jamaica, is dairy. Whether you take Thai or Vietnamese iced coffee, or an Indian yogurt lassi, or a big old glass of Grade A, there's no better way to wash away the flames.
Got milk?
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