I've fulfilled one, at long last. And I was able to do this in my own neighborhood with a woman I just met.
They call her: Marla. She works on Lake Street.
"Works magic", is more like it! After a lifetime searching for some sufficiently hot Indian, I was led to her. You see, Marla is a favorite of one of my good friends who assured me that Marla could make it happen.
Now, I have always been skeptical about this sort of claim. Since my work on subjective experience extends from color to taste, I understand that in the great heirarchy of the senses, many experts have concluded that "the sense of taste may be the most subjective of matters." (See, Dennett, D 1988: "Quining Qualia," Korsmeyer, C. 1999: "Making Sense of Taste," and Odom: "Subjective Experience: Representationalism, and the Explanatory Gap," forthcoming????)
Enough "shoptalk". This is what matters and why:
Restaurants often sensationalize their own capabilities at preparing "hot and spicy" dishes by emblazoning the menus with red chili pepper icons. The cute, but seemingly threatening, little peppers are tagged to item descriptions, in multiples, to indicate the ascending degrees of heat available from the kitchen. They have always seemed overtly vague to me. I'm sure, at some point, we all have paused to think about how hot a "4 chili" item really could be. But, while I'd prefer some reliable quantification in the form of scoville ratings, perhaps to be overseen by the state's bureau of weights and measures, with certification - something like the octane levels inspected each year at the gas pumps -
I know, it just ain't gonna happen.
So, other than the very remote possibility of anything like that happening, we must rely on waitstaff to express heat in gestures: wild eyes, feigned gasping for air while fanning mouth with hand, etc. Or they attempt description in the limited vocabulary for expressing heat in terms of degree, i.e., "really, really, etc., hot". (Such expressions make as much sense as the pepper clusters on menus.) The alternative descriptions are made by ostension to similarly vague notions, such as "hotter than Mexican hot and wasabi hot, but not quite Thai hot." (I'm guessing "Hastings, MN hot" is best kept a local secret, Right? Sshhhhh!)
All of this means that, on such matters, you cannot trust the judgment or descriptive capabilities of others. You'll only know how hot the food is when you try it.
-- Until, now.
Not only did I fulfill my "burning desire" with Marla, she gave me a new comparison adjective; she coined a new superlative as she described to me how most restaurants can't even approach "Marla's hot".
HOT - HOTTER - MARLA'S HOT! (And I like the double entendre, too.)
All that I can offer, by way of clarifying "MH", is to say that I was, as I seldom have been in my life, about anything, impressed. I submit that her restaurant's slogan, "7 days without curry, makes one weak!" might be augmented, with "7 days of Marla's hot, makes one weak - and there's nothing wrong with that!"
Here's a video tip for eating hot food.
Should you imagine that I am overstating my case and order your curry Marla's hot, then have regrets, I'll be at the next table wating for your left-overs. But I will not hand you an ice-cream.
Comming soon: A discussion of "heat mediocrity", chefs who, like some MD's, don't take you seriously, and a challenge for people who read product descriptions on labels.
N.B. Since I post infrequently, and because I shudder at the thought of sending any sort of message to everybody on "my list" or whatever they call it, signing on to this blog, I believe, will entitle you to "notices" of new postings. No guarantee that the notices won't bear a resemblance to your garden variety "spam", but I promise (for now) not to write anything about discount meds, or dates "waiting just to meet you!"
