Favorite Places for Spicy Food

[foodscience]

Usually when craving spicy foods I'll wander over to El Pelon or Brown Sugar Cafe. What are your favorite places in the city to get some seriously hot food?

[Joshua B]

Tip Top Thai in Teele Square, Somerville...

Hot Basil Fried Rice & Moody Chef dishes

[tomaneng]

Haven't been for Ethiopian in several years but to my recollection it was both delicious and super-spicy. Is Addis Red Sea still around?

[anitab]

Love India Quality! Its the best Indian food around (much better than Kashmir on Newbury or Tamarind Bay in Cambridge).

I ask them to make my dishes "Extra Hot". There is only one level higher and that's "Crazy Hot". You have to ask for it and make sure they believe you since they tend to water it down if they don't know you. But, be careful what you ask for, because Crazy Hot is really, damn hot!

[lossless]

Qingdao Garden has a fried long green pepper dish that is quite spicy. I'm Korean and felt reasonably confident that I could handle fried peppers, but it had me sweating quickly.

Zoe's has a fish dish that's basically boiled fish in a soup that's just a ton of red peppers with some liquid. Very hot. It made me concerned about my stomach lining.

[another_adam]

ooh, that's a great hint, thanks! I'd have to say, if you order a dish called "chilies in sauce", you should probably consider yourself warned.
anyway, it's a great dish, and rangoli is consistently better than rani, IMHO. (incidentally, rani does have a chicken version of it, though I've never tried it)

[another_adam]

Rani in Brookline (Coolidge Corner) can be a little hit or miss, but a dish that's been great every time I've been there is the "Mirchi ka salan", basically a big bowl of chili peppers simmered in sauce. The spice level of individual chilis can vary quite a bit, but when you hit the hot ones, it's definitely some head-sweating euphoria :)

[BobB]

Rangoli also offers this (or at least they did a few months ago), and has a warning on the menu to the effect of "if you order this don't even think about sending it back for being too hot!"

They'll even throw in some chicken if you're a dedicated carnivore like me and ask for it.

[Harp00n]

a bit further afield than most is The Chicken-bone Saloon on Rte. 135 in Framingham.it's a dive of a bar but their Buffalo wings are awesome. They have several different sauces, available for purchase,with the penultimate being the Thermo-nuclear. This is still flavorfull but you WILL break-out in beads of sweat with this one folks! These would fit in nicely on Hell Night at The East Coast Grill.

[Baiye]

Absolute hottest: The Blazing Hot items in the lunch buffet at Southeast Asia in Lowell

Best-tasting heat: Sichuan Gourmet in Billerica. Hurtin' hot but it tastes so good you can't stop.

[Johnresa]

At Little Q Hot Pot in Quincy if you order the spicy mala broth you are one step away from combusting....lol. I love it.

[fenian]

Love the topic!

Blue Ribbon BBQ (Arlington): The habanero sauce they have there is delicious and very spicy. Great place.
Zoe's (Somerville): Dry diced chicken with chilis. This is the single spiciest dish I've had in Boston. It's excellent.
Dok Bua (Brookline): Spicy basil catfish (ordered "pet ma," then covered with the chilis in fish sauce in their spice tray). Mmmmmm. (or many other dishes).

[BobB]

I had Zoe's dry diced chicken with chilis at their new location in Brookline shortly after they opened. It was delicious, but not that hot unless you eat the dried red chilis, which are hot but not that flavorful (or pleasant to chew) on their own. The fresh green chilis in the dish were quite edible but pretty mild by comparison. Maybe they just couldn't get really hot ones that day?

[fenian]

Oh, I eat many of the dried chilis along with the chicken. And only when it's getting to be too intense do I start picking out the chicken. I think the fresh green ones are even hotter but I could be wrong.

[yumyum]

Your post reminded me to add the cumin lamb at Zoe's (Somerville) last time was so hot I could barely eat it. But I did :-)

[edgrimley]

Been really happy with some of the spicy options around here.

- ECG regular menu and of course Hell Night
- Mary Chung - dun dun noodles (holy crap!) and the suan la chow show
- Anise - liberal use of sichuan peppercorn in many dishes is numbing, tingly and hot a the same time.
- Didn't get it last time at All Star, but they've got a meatloaf sandwich smothered with Inner Beauty

[hargau]

To me something spicy that is cooked spicy is much much better then something that is cooked plain and then smothered with sauce out of a bottle afterwards.

Sichuan Garden and Sichuan Gourmet both have some tasty spicy dishes.

[BobB]

ECG Hell Night, certainly. They can go beyond my limits, which are pretty high.

For everyday dining, Sol Azteca if you add their nuclear-level homemade habañero sauce to anything - which is not on the menu by the way, you have to ask for it. They just recently started offering it for people like us!

Alternatively, any good takeout Mexican burrito (Anna's is my choice since I live near one), stuffed with jalapeños and slathered with Melinda's XXX or XXXX Reserve sauce.

[Bostonbob3]

I found that the food at Hell Night varies from sort-of-hot, to pretty damn hot. But nothing killed me and made me scream for mamma.

I agree that Sol Azteca has a reasonably hot habenero sauce. But I think the (what I call) nasty-killer sauce at El Pelon is even hotter.

[jogo7375]

great calls on all these ethnic places (need to try India Quality sometime even though I dont do Indian, I love spicy food).

just figured i'd mention the hot sauce at Blue Ribbon BBQ if you like spicy BBQ, that is.

anyone know of a serviceable super spicy buffalo wing?

[DoubleMan]

The ECG wings of mass destruction are delicious and incredibly hot, although not buffalo-style (they're better that that).

[TheScribe]

Not right in the city, but on Route 9 Framingham, I have a friend who swears by Sichuan Gourmet for super-spicy food.

[Spike]

Ditto for me. Spiciest thing I've had was a fish dish what looked like a big bowl of soup with sichuan peppercorns floating on top. After eating that, the normally spicy eggplant dish tasted sweet and had other interesting flavors I didn't taste before. Of course, I regretted it for the next day or so because my small intestine stopped working because it didn't like the spicy liquids :-P

[a l i c e]

Korean food, particularly spicy seafood soup (jam pong), spicy beef soup (yoo ke jang), various kimchee stews (chigae) can all put hair on chest (or take it off, depending on your gender). A good version of jampong can be had at Hometown in Union Sq. If you are not Korean, they may bring it out to you on the mild side - ask them to turn the heat up if you dare!

[yumyum]

Sichuan garden in Brookline has an incindiary chicken with chiles dish -- too hot for me. And the chili pork at Floating Rock will make you cry. In a good way.

[Alcachofa]

Also Mary Cheung's in Central Square has some items with a serious kick.

[foodieB]

Yeah, the Suan la Chow Show rocks! If that doesn't make you sweat, I don't know what will.

[eatanddestroy]

Some of the most delicious spicy food that I have had was at be Duk Bua. Make sure to ask them to make it extra extra spicy. Last time, I was sweating during my entire meal (and I have a pretty high tolerance for spice).

[DoubleMan]

Dok Bua has great spice, although I've found it to be a bit incosistent. Ordering the same dish on two different trips, one dish was hellish and the other was merely very hot.

Haven't been to Hell Night at ECG, but I've loved their chicken wings and the party beef from hell on other trips.

[Ali G]

I've had some very spicey meals at Dok Dua. I usually beg most Thai places around here to make things extra spicey, thinking it will at least get me to a medium. I wouldn't make that mistake here. My friend, who had just returned from Thailand, told our waitress to make his dish "kick my ass spicey"... I asked for medium. I had a good sweat going, but loved my dish. He, on the other hand, couldnt finish his meal and was beat red in the face.

[Bostonbob3]

Oh good Lord...your friend was beat in the face? What terrible service. :)

[mkel34]

East Coast grill hell night brought my knowledge of spicy food to a new level when I went last year. The bone in chicken wings were only labeled a 2 out of 5(?), I felt they were easily more spicy than the pasta from hell.

[foodscience]

Yeah, I can't wait until Monday. It will be my 3rd hell night. I agree that they're "bomb" system is alittle miscalibrated, as the wings are generally hotter than a lot of their other items. Last time I got the West Indes pork 3 ways, which was pretty tame, except for the sausage which definetly had its share of scotch bonnet peppers in it. I'm anxiously awaiting the pasta from hell.

[jsj]

ooh... the bone-in wings... yes.. hot.

[hiddenboston]

I nearly burned my face off one night at India Quality. Had the chicken vindaloo and made the mistake of asking for it "extra spicy." Never again!

[Bostonbob3]

Marc, I had IQ's chicken vindaloo (extra-extra spicy) again Saturday evening.

Oh I love the pain so much...

[maillard]

India Quality in Kenmore Sq. has some serious spice going on. I ordered my food medium and it was *almost* too spicy (exactly how I like it!). I've only eaten there once, though, so I'm not sure if it's always so spicy. I ordered some dish with chicken and chickpeas. Very tasty!

[tamerlanenj]

Second! India Quality knows what spicy means. Medium almost always suffices, but I the "HOT" version of the lamb madras is absolutely my favorite.

[Bostonbob3]

Third! India Quality is the only place that gets my vindaloo hot enough without a long, drawn-out plea for spice.