The chilli scale at our shop starts at one and now tops out at sixteen, and the top has a reputation older than most of the people who order it. When The Sunday Times reviewed us in 2005 the summit was eight, and the reporter who tried that level gave up after one sip, describing a soup that looked innocuous and was, in his word, inhumane. He was still sniffling while eating his level-one follow-up bowl, and he had the honesty to print both facts. The ladder has grown since. The reporter's record stands, and there are now eight levels above it.
Who orders it
According to that same piece, about twenty eight-chilli bowls left the kitchen every week, and most went to young women. The owner's theory, offered to the paper with a chuckle, was that they thought it would help them lose weight. The most devoted regular was a secondary school student who came every week for his fix and finished each bowl to the bottom. Twenty bowls a week of the hottest thing on the menu is a strange thing for a kitchen to send out, and stranger that the same menu also sells level one, but that is the range of the city. Singapore eats spice the way it eats everything, across the whole scale.
The incidents
The record has color in it. One customer fainted partway through a six-chilli bowl. She had come with colleagues daring each other to finish, and she pushed past what her body wanted to do. The ambulance was called, and she came around before it arrived. Another customer, after an eight-chilli bowl, threatened to sue. The threat was withdrawn, and the bowl stayed on the menu. At six and eight chillies the heat overpowers the soup, the paper said so then and we say so now, and the reason we warn first-timers is plain: bowls ordered above your level come back half finished, and wasted food is the worst outcome a kitchen can watch.
How to take the challenge
Start at one or two and climb across visits, which is how our owner himself eats, at level two. Drink milk if the burn builds; capsaicin dissolves in fat, so water chases the heat around your mouth and milk lifts it. Eat at a pace, the heat compounds as the meal goes on. Order the fried chicken ramen as your vehicle, it is the bowl the scale was built around, the best seller in the shop, and it holds up at every rung. And keep the rice order in reserve, it is the quiet professional of burn relief.
Bringing the table
A challenge eaten alone is suffering, a challenge eaten in company is sport. The scale was designed for groups: everyone calls their own count when they order, so one table can run a level one for the cautious, an eight for the confident and a sixteen for the one who talked loudest on the walk over. Order the same base bowl across the table and you can taste each other's levels, which is half the fun and the fastest education in what the numbers mean. The fried chicken ramen is the usual vehicle, the seafood Umi Jigoku holds heat well for anyone who wants the eight-chilli experience with the sea in the bowl, and the mushroom Shiraike is the version that lets a vegetarian take the same dare as everyone else.
The club
Finish a clean sixteen and you have gone eight levels past the bowl that humbled a newspaper reporter. There is no club card and no register, but there is a story to tell at the table, and the kitchen respects anyone who earns it.