In Heat

I’ve traveled the world eating spicy food. I’ve trekked through the jungles of Thailand, rafted the rivers of Vietnam and climbed mountains (albeit small ones) in India. I’ve endured multi-course repasts of food so inundated with chiles that most of my fellow diners surrendered in pain. I’ve fearlessly sought out the incendiary spices of street food, despite repeated guidebook warnings. And not only have I survived, but I’ve enjoyed it. Nothing has been too hot for me—until now. After circumnavigating the globe, it was a restaurant right here in Cambridge that finally felled me.

Welcome to Hell Night at the East Coast Grill, an event billed as, in what I’ve come to think of as the understatement of the year, an “over-the-top fiery food challenge.” Boston culinary legend Chris Schlesinger, owner of the East Coast Grill and winner of the 1996 James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Northeast, created Hell Night on a dare, when customers taunted him that his food “wasn’t really that hot.” Over the years it’s evolved into a three-day orgy of inimitable flavor.

On an ordinary night, the East Coast Grill’s menu is not known for being staid. It offers interpretations of seafood and grilled meats, influenced by the pungent spicing of Asia and the Caribbean. But Hell Night is in an altogether different key. The menu is exclusively hot, from drinks to dessert, and each dish is rated on a scale of one to seven “bombs” (though you’d be hard-pressed to find anything under four).

I geared myself for the challenge of eating my way through the menu, skeptical that anything could puncture my bubble of imperviousness to heat. To prime my palate, I ordered a Cold Fusion Martini from Hell ($6), reported to have been “transported from MIT in a plutonium vacuum canister.” It looked innocuous enough, like a regular martini really, but, our waitress warned, the vodka had been infused with chili peppers. Lovely, I thought, as it barely warmed my mouth.

My first hint that all was not right came with the dish of “Russian Roulette” pickled peppers, so called because they ranged in intensity from mind-blowing to deadly. “So, which are the hot ones?” I cleverly asked my waitress. She didn’t even crack a smile. Clearly, exposure to spicy food had done nothing to improve her disposition.

The guys cooking behind the open grill were an entirely different story. Pumped up by their testosterone-fueled reaction to open fire (hot! dangerous!), and buoyed by the fact that they were causing diners to cry in pain, they were a rowdy, and extremely cheerful, bunch. As I ordered the Infamous Pasta from Hell ($8.50) with habañero sausage and oil-pickled chili peppers, at seven bombs the hottest dish on the menu, they laughed in glee. “When you eat it,” cackled the chef closest to my table, “don’t blame me!”

“Yeah right,” I thought, “they’ll see who’s the master.” Boy, was I wrong. It began innocently enough, with a slight tingling, though not unpleasant, sensation on my tongue. By the third bite, I was feeling uncomfortable. And by bite number five my mouth was beginning to swell. It wasn’t until the eighth bite, as tears started running down by cheeks, that I cried uncle and lay down the fork. I have to admit that a trip to the bathroom was necessary.

Here’s a quick lesson. The heat of peppers is measured in Scoville Units. Bell peppers have zero, jalapeños have around 5,000, and cayenne peppers have around 40,000. Habañeros, the hottest of all known peppers, and what I chose to eat, have 300,000. Yes, that’s right: Three hundred thousand.

After the pasta, my ability to taste was temporarily suspended; I have no idea if the rest of the food on offer could compare. I have my doubts, though. There’s little consolation in the fact that I outlasted most other diners, even the masochistic, thrill-seeking types that frequent Hell Night. My world is shattered—I am no longer the undisputed queen of heat.