We just tried them yesterday. My daughter made a face and said “these are just BBQ”.
On the other side of the wasabi coin, I was at a Japanese place last night. Mixed the wasabi in with the soy sauce, had a couple pieces, realized that there’s no kick to the wasabi. Mix in a little more, still nothing. Mix in a lot more, still nothing. Finally stuck my finger in the wasabi and popped a lump the size of my thumb in my mouth.
I’ve had hotter mayonnaise.
Probably not going back to that place.
I’ve had those same chips and they are pretty hot to me, but not nearly as hot as everyone else who was trying them was saying. Everyone else tried one or two and I had several handfuls.
I thought they were delicious. 
We thought they tasted fine. Just not spicy.
I had an acquaintance in grad school who thought it was hilarious to mix up a bowl of very strong wasabi and present it to the unsuspecting as guacamole.
Serious yuks :rolleyes:. He was an asshole.
Have you had Utz Red Hot Chips? By far the spiciest chips I know of, other than small-batch stuff meant for he-man doin’s in bars. Very hot, but excellent overall flavor. Too many things trading on “ghost peppers” and the like are just ordinariness with a layer of fire.
Never had them. We don’t eat chips often. We just made the mistake of going into a Trader Joe’s while hungry (seriously, don’t do that).
your father sounds like he was a wonderful person to be around.
Yeah, he could be a nice guy and a very impatient guy, and unfortunately you never knew which one would show up. We’re friends now but if he starts that crap I just walk away because I’m too old to put up with it!
This is a weird story, funny and it is about a “bad restaurant”. But, it is not bad as it is one of the fondest memories of my wife.
When we first got married, I worked two jobs. One of them was night desk clerk at a hotel chain, major one with an employee discount that was awesome. In 2000, $15.00 a night rooms.
Of course, managers could black them out and avoid offering the rooms, but inventory was done each night 364 days out and they had to do it manually.
I worked night shift (and my job was to pull 98% of our beds out of the employee discount inventory so I knew the trick), so one night I waited until the very moment when the timer shifted and booked 5 nights in Paris, 3 nights in London (Sutton). We were poor, but I was going to give my wife a trip to Europe for her honeymoon. 
Anyways, the point of that was to set up we were poor, well not poor, but cash light. Working 16 hour days at two jobs, but we are still the lucky ones who could make it so I am grateful.
So, we get to England with massive jet lag because I booked the cheapest flight I could. We get there early in the morning after a very long flight and the hotel so graciously checked us in early. So we grab a nap and wake up and we are famished, have not eaten in 24 hours, so we go to the hotel restaurant. No one is there, at all, and we learned later the British tend to eat later.
We get menus, now mind you, I budgeted 150 U.S. dollars for food the entire three day stay in London. So, I am still thinking americaneze and I see the meals are 20-40 bucks. Expensive, but I told my wife we would have one fine meal on this trip. So I tell her, let’s do it this evening.
Of course, you figured it out, the prices were in British pounds which were like 2.2 to 1 at the time. I was tired and dumb, and I figured this out too late My god it was a great meal, but it was our entire food budget.
So we went to the store, bought some biscuits for breakfast and decided to try and find a cheap place for dinner each night.
We are walking down the street in Sutton, nearby the hotel. It was a beautiful place with cobblestone streets and shops, and we spot this little Turkish place. A counter type of place and the big lit up menu showed cheap food. I also saw one of those “turning meat things” used to make gyros in the U.S. We love that kind of food so we go in.
There is this very friendly, constantly smiling young man. I can only assume at the time he was Turkish. The menu is HUGE, at least 80 items. It is in English, but the young man speaks very broken English. So we ask for two items on the menu, I honestly cannot remember now and it really is inconsequential as you will soon know.
The young man, with all smiles just stands there nodding. He is so nice, so I feel bad after a few minutes and say something like “can we get those items?”
At this point he just sorta of gets sad. You know what I mean, that dropping face, the dejected look. He says after a long pause “No, no, we have *****”.
Now, I use asterisks because I can honestly tell you I have no idea what he said. From that day forward, my wife and I kindly, and jokingly, refer to it as “kolkash” in reference to the entertaining Simpson episode.
Anyways, we say, “ok we will have some Kolkash”. He immediately gets excited, I mean REALLY excited and proceeds to put together two pitas filled with some of the best meat I have ever tasted. It was delicious and only like 2 pounds cost each. We give him all the pence we get in change as well as our spare we have and he gets even more happy (we learn later tipping in England is not like the US). We leave and are happy and full.
The next night, we say “man we should do that again”. So we return (mind you we never see another soul in this place). The same young man is there and he brightens up with this wonderful glow the moment we walk in.
We once again look at the menu and say “let’s try something else this time”. We tell him we would like 2 of ******. He immediately gets sad again and stands there. We look at him for a while and then ask if there is a problem. He says “we have Kolkash”.
So, we are now a little confused, massive menu in front of us, but no other options? But nonetheless we liked Kolkash last time, so we get it again. We were also tired from hiking all over London to view the sites so we just wanted food and to get home.
We give him our change again and he glows like a boy and girl on their first date.
Last night in England… we return there once again.
The pleasant young man is there… again.
He brightens up the same way he always has as we enter. He greets us with “hello my friends” as if we are old buddies. It was so charming.
Anyways, this time, I really want to try these stuffed grape leaves that are on the menu. They look divine, but it does not mention what that are stuffed with. So I ask him, “those stuffed grape leaves look great, what are they stuffed with?”.
He just stands there smiling. I decide at this time I will be stubborn, I am going to get to the bottom of this mystery of the “Kolkash only restaurant”.
I state my request again, pointing at the big board menu above the counter, “the grape leaves, what are they stuffed with?” I say with confidence.
He gets a little flustered and confused, so I move closer to the point of the counter underneath the sign with a giant lit up grape leaves picture and point effusively. Not rudely of course. Once again, he was so nice, but man I had to know. Is there anything else here but Kolkash?
He slowly turns around with a smile on his face and looks at the sign. I get excited and say “yes, yes, those, what are they stuffed with?”. He then pauses, looks back at me, smile wavering and then coming back every couple of seconds.
He is thinking, it is a sincere attempt I can tell to remedy this massive communication gap we are having. He wants so desperately to help me and I want him to as well. This lasts for 2-3 minutes, no lie.
He finally says with a deep accent “grape leaves?”. I say “Yes, Yes, Yes, what are they stuffed with?”. He pauses for the last time, turns to me and with a giant grin and says “they are stuffed with pink.”
Pink? My wife and I look at each other, almost dying of laughter. But, we cannot laugh because we don’t want to insult our wonderful host. With tears forming in my eyes, I decide “darn it, I am going to have these grape leaves regardless of what is in them”. So, I say, “ok, I will take an order of them.”
Our friend then stares me right in the eyes, with the most genuine smile on his face and just… stares.
I say again “can I please have an order of those grape leaves?”
He stares at me, becomes befuddled again, gets sad…
Turns to us… looks us right in the eye and says “We have Kolkash”, as a beautiful, genuine, and excited smile emerges from his face again.
My wife and I can no longer contain our joy. We smile and laugh openly and shout out “Ok, we will have two of those!!!”. He excitedly runs to get our food, returns with those wonderful pitas filled with, I don’t know, maybe pink.
We decide this time to speak to him some more. He remembers our previous conversations, small banter you get while waiting for food, and asks us again where we are from.
We say the U.S. He says “ahh, New York City”.
We reply “no, Ohio”.
He says, “New York City?”.
We correct, “no we have not been there, we are from a small town in Ohio. It is a state in the U.S.”.
He says, “Your from New York City?” with an expression of awe and delight.
We acquiesce, “Yes,” we say, “we are from New York City”.
“Ahhhh,” he exclaims, “Do you know Akhmed? He is my brother, he is in New York City”.
My god it was a wonderful experience and a great story.
We left the establishment after a pleasant conversation. Gave him our last coins (which by the way it turned out we needed the next day for the ferry- that is a different story) and walked down the beautifully lit cobblestone streets to our hotel. 100 paces down the road we looked at each other and burst out laughing.
To this day, it was one of the greatest memories I have about my wife and I thank this young man, and this limited menu restaurant, for it.
Dammit, now you’ve made me hungry for kolkash. I must book a flight to London.
Go to Sutton, I just spoke to Akhmed and his brother still works there 
Please tell me you also ordered a crab juice. 
This happened years ago when Subway only had two kinds of bread.
My wife and I walk into a Subway in North Carolina around 7 o’clock at night. The place is deserted. The woman behind the counter has blank eyes and a slack jaw.
“White or wheat?” she says.
“White,” my wife says.
“We’re all out,” the clerk says.
“Uh … okay … well, wheat then, I guess?”
“The wheat’s no good.”
The clerk points to the place where they keep the bread. There’s one mangled loaf of wheat bread there.
At this point my wife turns to me without missing a beat and says “It’s not much of a cheese shop, is it?”
After some prodding the clerk admits that they have some hamburger buns that they use to make kids’ meals. She can make us sandwiches using those if we want. We just want something to eat, so we say okay and she starts laboriously assembling two turkey sandwiches on hamburger buns.
Another customer comes in and the manager comes out of the back to take his order.
“White or wheat?” the manager asks.
“White.”
“Right away, sir.”
The manager turns to the oven and takes out a whole tray of freshly baked white bread and starts making this guy a sandwich. Meanwhile our clerk is still struggling with getting our turkey to fit on the hamburger buns.
Sigh.
No we ordered Mountain Dew 
That was also a joke between us. She was an amazing woman.
QFT.
Hot without taste is just masochism. Or exhibitionism.
I ride with a bunch of big scary looking bikers. We usually are a large group and we are used to waiting for a table because we don’t make reservations. We are used to being seated in the back of the room, as far out of sight of the “normal” customers as possible. This is all OK with us, we are really nice, patient people who tip well.
A while back, we went to the local Cracker Barrel for brunch. The waitstaff started MOVING people to other tables so they could sit us right away. We were all 
and WTF about it until the Prez asked what was going on because we were happy to wait outside in the rocking chairs and tell tall stories until we could be accommodated.
Apparently, the last time we had been there, people were driving into the parking lot and would see us sitting outside and would then drive away. I’m not sure if they drove away because of the big bad bikers or because they thought the place was so full that there was a line of 20 people hanging out.
We’ve had female waitstaff scream and run away when we trooped in, we have had cops called to hang out and watch us and we have had places turn us away because they “didn’t have room for a large group”. We have never once had that sort of treatment before, so yeah, it was really weird.
I’ll try to remember to make reservations in the future because we will sure make that a regular stop.
This is off-topic, but I’ve never understood that. What’s so scary about a bunch of bikers? I worked in western South Dakota during the Sturgis rally (including during the 50th) and never had a problem. And we had pretty much all the gangs stop in. We often said we’d rather put up with 100 bikers to one tourist any day.
I guess it would depend on if it’s in an area where some of the more notorious outlaw clubs are.
or they just assume bikers are bad news.