Why ‘Make It Spicy’ Backfires — and What to Say Instead

Like almost everything, flavor is subjective. No one can be certain that someone else perceives the taste of something the same way they do. One person’s enjoyment of the bright, citrusy taste of cilantro is another person’s soapy guacamole. That’s why it’s difficult to give an answer to a customer when they ask if something is good. Personally, I don’t think that the grilled salmon dish is delicious because I don’t like salmon, grilled, smoked, or otherwise, but people who like salmon tend to love the grilled salmon. “Good” is personal and it can be even more of a challenge when someone asks if something is spicy.

Nobody knows somebody else’s tolerance for spice, so asking your server for it is a risky move. I have seen some restaurant menus with little pepper icons next to each entrée indicating how spicy the dish might be. Does one pepper mean mild spicy and two peppers mean medium spicy? Can my palate tolerate three pepper icons and will four make me projectile sweat? There’s really no way to know. 

There’s a viral photo of a restaurant order where a customer asked for their pad thai to be extra spicy. The server who rang it in typed the word spicy 17 times, ending with “make him regret being born.” Asking for spicy means you are expecting the kitchen to know how spicy you like it. Maybe we need a better system than little drawings of peppers on the menu. If only we could all become more familiar with the Scoville rating. 

Understanding the Scoville scale

The Scoville scale was developed by a pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville in 1912 and it rates the measure of pungency or spiciness of peppers, recorded in Scoville heat units (SHU). A standard bell pepper has an SHU rating of 0 while a Tabasco pepper hovers around 25,000 to 50,000. If you absolutely hate your taste buds, esophagus, and nasal passages and want to destroy all of them, there’s a chili pepper called Pepper X with a Scoville rating of 2,693,000, or 583 times hotter than a standard jalapeño. 

Instead of asking your server for “medium spicy” you could ask for a specific SHU, but most servers won’t know what you’re talking about unless they happen to watch Hot Ones on YouTube — a series where celebrities are interviewed while eating progressively spicier chicken wings. I wouldn’t make it past the first wing because I grew up eating white rice and thinking that ground black pepper was about as spicy as it gets. Meanwhile, my friend Tamara who practically gargles with Sriracha, would make it to wing number 10 and wonder when they were going to start getting hot. 

What to eat or drink if the food is too spicy

If you ask your server to make it spicy, the kitchen will be happy to oblige. But don’t blame your server if the spicy is actually spicy. You can always drink a glass of milk which will help wash the capsaicin molecules from your tongue. Those are the chemicals making your tongue burn, but your server isn’t going to bring you milk unless you specifically order it and then it will be added to your check. 

Carbohydrates like bread or crackers, can also soothe the burn as well as something sweet like honey or sugar. Your server will be happy to show you the menu. Whatever you do, don’t drink water. All that does is spread the heat throughout your mouth and makes things worse and then your server has to keep filling up your water glass while thinking, “Be careful what you wish for.”

What to do if the food isn’t spicy enough

Most of us know our tolerance for spice. What we don’t know is the kitchen’s tolerance for it. It’s always easy to add more spice, but you can’t take it out once it’s in there so when in doubt, ask for less. Every restaurant has at least one or two hot sauces that can be brought to the table if it’s not hot enough for you. 

If you’re someone who can’t be satisfied with the average spice level in a restaurant, please feel free to carry around your own bottle of Hellfire Doomed, Mad Dog 357 No. 9 Plutonium, or some hot molten lava from your last visit to Kīlauea volcano.