So, I went into Chipotle the other day, and approached the young black dude who was taking the order, and asked for a bowl. Then he asked which rice, and said “Let me guess: White?”
I don’t know if he was being racist or what, but I’ve got a thick (white) skin, and can see the humor in anything, so I was laughing when I said “What the fuck is THAT supposed to mean?..but, yeah, I want white rice, but still, what the fuck, dude?”
He got really nervous at that point, thinking he offended me, and of course I took advantage and guilted him into extra steak and guac.
Years from now he will wake up while falling asleep, randomly remembering this awkward encounter
This is mild racism.
Jokes aside it kinda is, but as a white guy who actually like hot food I’ve also been known to say “and don’t make it white guy spicy, be real”
I’ve heard that people with high tolerance for alcoholic beverages also have high tolerance for extreme spicy foods.
I get a lot of ‘are you sure?’ When I ask for hot sauce
It’s taco bell, it’s all mild sauce
Ordered TBell over the weekend, and the order came with Diablo. Don’t usually order sauce because I have my own. Decided to give it a try.
It was like barely more spicy than hot Tobasco or Chalula. I was honestly disappointed
Their Diablo sauce is pretty good but still not that spicy
Everybody watch out, we got a badass over here.
They’re not wrong, though. Even their Diablo sauce is only rated to around ~15,000 SHU (though some will argue that Fire sauce is hotter and thus Diablo is actually less than 1000, myself included).
Even if the rating is accurate, that means at the very most Taco Bell sauce is barely hotter than a jalapeño, which any hot sauce enthusiast will confirm is on the lower end of the Scoville scale.
The point I’m making is that they’re not bragging, they’re stating simple facts.
I just believe words have meaning
If Taco Bell has sauces that are Hot, Fire, and Diablo then what are other actual hot sauces called?
It’s hyperbole, like someone saying their chicken wings were AMAZING.
If by some miracle Jesus came down from heaven and made sweet love to you all night what would you call it? They’ve already wasted AMAZING on a damn chicken wing.
credit to Louis CK for the Jesus bit
I’d call it what it is: rape.
Supreme Court already said Jesus also has presidential immunity
I think those names are pretty appropriate on the scale of Mild to Ass Reaper.
If Taco Bell has sauces that are Hot, Fire, and Diablo then what are other actual hot sauces called?
Hot sauce has a long history of hyperbole with marketing. I get that a lot of folks have a preference for high spice (I am one) and the pinch of cayenne that goes into a fancy fruit pie or taco bell sauce packet is going to be barely detectable, but I cook a lot for other folks and if someone says they don’t like any spice then diablo will ruin their night.
I’d call that shit biblical, messianic. Miraculous, even.
I probably wouldn’t enjoy it though because I don’t like men that way.
Doesn’t feel mild coming out the other end.
Sounds like you might have gastrointestinal issues. Taco Bell hot sauce isn’t potent enough to give you the shits.
Could also be previously undiagnosed lactose intolerance, especially if you usually order it “supreme” (which adds sour cream).
If you drink enough most things will give you the shits. All that matters is I won the bet and didn’t have to pay for lunch.
That probably has nothing to do with the sauce
Salt is often a bit too spicy for me
This is why we need better language describing spices in English. We have salty spices and spicy hot spices. Even if spicy hot spices there are three very different and distinct chemicals that make spicy hot spices.
That’s not even to begin to tackle the question of how to talk about the levels of the spice.
I use caliente, picante, and aromatic to describe the meanings of the English spicy. Salty is just salty, or maybe seasoned if I’m feeling fancy.
Wait what are the salty spices other than salt?
Think like an everything bagel. A lot of the stuff one foods like that may be considered spicy but not hot. Like if you just dumped Anton of seasoning on something you might say “it’s too spicy” but not mean hot.
Is taco bell mild sauce just a packet of air?
Medium sauce is water with pepper sprinkled in.
A guy I work with once went with his two black friends to their local chip shop, owned by a big Jamaican guy.
He was the only white person in there, and when he placed his order, the owner went “Dja want gravy wit dat? White people always want graavyy”.
He did want gravy.
“I knew when you walked in you were gonna order the chicken”
“All these years I thought I liked chicken 'cause it was delicious! Turns out I was genetically predisposed to liking chicken.”
Hell yeah, I want gravy.
I’m white and I want gravy
“How dare you! But yes.”
Racial profiling in food is just an attempt to deliver the customer what they want. It would be the most benign form.
I’m oldish and pasty white, I have a hell of a time getting Mexican places to make it proper hot.
That said, I do love me potatoes and gravy…
In fairness, gravy is the tits
White. Brown. It’s all good. Can’t go wrong. Same goes for gravy.
My wife is white and every time she gets forks and spoons at a Asian restaurant, she’s absolutely delighted. She can use chopsticks, just not well.
That podcast is hilarious for all the wrong reasons. They are not only race reductionists but they basically boil everything down to individual attitudes and beliefs.
One of the most egregious ones was when they told people not to practice speaking people’s native languages with them and to hire a tutor! Dumbest fucking people, they are equally as smart as MAGA.
The language tutoring lobby got to them…
I feel like the stereotype has trended binary recently: white dudes are either the “black pepper is too spicy” type, or they’re the chili heads who mainline reapers
As a white girl, I like medium peppers and can occasionally enjoy a habeñero sauce but I’ll feel it. The thing is it’s just unremarkable, so I rarely say it. Most white people in my life like how spicy I cook things. That said my mom actually did think black pepper was too spicy.
I like stuff that’s hot but not to the point I can’t taste anything in the food other than hotness. It’s supposed to be a condiment not take over the whole meal.
I think that unless folks can handle wildly intense things like reaper sauce, most people’s favorite level of spice is just beneath their tolerance. Like they would rather have a spicy meal they can handle than a single crazy spicy bite. It just turns out that people have different tolerances. For some people, that ideal level for them is just a little black pepper. For many people though, black pepper is hardly noticeable, or at least forgettable.
That’s certainly the case with me. I use red pepper flakes a ton and Black pepper is noticeable but I wouldn’t consider it spicy or hot. As far as actual hot stuff (to me) habenero sauce seems to about my limit for what I would use and still consider good and I can eat jalapenos all day.
There’s a guy that comes out to our happy hours sometimes that always makes a big show of asking for the hottest wings they have and then after he starts on them asking the waiter if those are really the hottest (while red faced and sweating). It’s really annoying.
At a Indian restaurant, the waiter said, “We have regular and spicy… And Indian spicy.” Then he goes, “I usually don’t offer Indian spicy to everybody”. I’m brown, and I was given special treatment. But honestly I think I broke his heart when I asked for regular because he thought I could hang.
Sorry man! 😭
One of my proudest moments as a white dude who likes spicy stuff was when a buddy and I were hanging out with some local guys while on a trip to Mexico. I was just chowing down on some super hot salsa and one of the Mexican guys gets real excited and starts calling me “the blond Mexican”. I’m sure my wife is tired of that story, but I will continue to tell it to her for the rest of my days.
Woah. If there’s one thing that excites me more than foreigners speaking Spanish, it’s people eating our food how it should be eaten. Well done! I hope you enjoyed yourself.
The food culture of Mexico is amazing, and if you’re eating at the right places there is usually no option but to speak Spanish! I’ve had to request “más picante” before, though generally that is at restaurants used to serving gringos. At tianguis or taco guys on the street there’s usually no problem getting the spice.
Achievement unlocked!
Well done, dude. It is a fine and honorable story to tell, and let no one tell you otherwise!
Güero! Estas invitado a la carne asada!
I’m white and they said that to me once, but there was such an underlying tone of menace in “Indian hot” that I knew they weren’t fucking around.
That is such a perfect way to describe how “Indian hot” is offered! No malice, of course, just an honest warning!
Why don’t you make hot a little hotter, make that the top number and make that a little hotter?
Most places only have 10 hot, but if you’re chowing on 10 and want to go hotter, where can you go from there? That’s why ours goes to 11
A friend and I went to an indian place and got their hottest dish. We both kinda shrugged at it, and the waiters took offense and brought out raw onions slathered in hot sauce. Eating those helped, but it still wasn’t really spicy, ya know? Neither of us are even the heat fanatics, habanero levels of hot are good enough, so maybe some places just do like 5s and hope nobody wants the 10s.
One step away from !aneurysmposting@sopuli.xyz
Sometimes when my boyfriend and I want a spicy cuisine, I’ll do the online ordering because I’m the one with the non-white name. He’s convinced they tone down the spice levels when they see his name on the order.😂
I’m white British and went through this at a New Zealand Indian restaurant. After all the warnings, Indian spicy was barely even mid-level spicy. I’m from Bradford and don’t need mollycoddling.
In my experience Indians and British Asians are not even that into spice heat as a whole.
Bradford counts as its own race, regardless of skin pigmentation
I’m white, my wife is Desi. She can’t handle spicy food, and I thrive on it. We order each other’s dishes.
My wife is West Indian and trying to convince restaurants she wants actually spicy food is a constant struggle
I’m VERY white, and so is my tolerance of spicyness. I always have to ask if the food is actually spicy or Dutch-spicy, because if it’s the former, I’ll take the extra mild please.
We call that “Upper Midwest Spicy” in my house.
A kebab place in town used to have their spicyness range from “Norwegian mild” to “immigrant spicy”.
I once went from my regular order of “Norwegian spicy” up to “immigrant mild”. Bad move for me, delicious kebab though.
I kinda wanna ask for Indian spicy next time I go to a restaurant
Ask if they could bring just a spoon full for you to test your might. I bet they’d have a laugh setting your intestines on fire.
One time I was at an event with Indian catering. I picked the dish I wanted, and the caterers warned me that it was spicy. I was halfway through it when the person I was having a chat with asked if the spicy dish was good. I was like “what? This is supposed to be spicy?” Then I paid attention and realised it was a bit spicy, I just forgot because it was less spice than I’m used to. It was delicious though and I used my naan to soak up all the sauce
I guess that was probably white spicy. I want to try Indian spicy now
I’m a white guy and I genuinely love searing mouth pain followed shortly by burning bowel movements and it takes a real effort to convince most restaurants that I can handle the heat.
The other day was my retirement party. We went to a local Chinese place, and while all the others were getting the touristy stuff, sweet sour and mu shu, I said “smoked bean pork.” The waiter looked at me like I was from Alpha Centauri, like “what’s an old white guy doing ordering the good stuff?”
I’m a white man, I enjoy very spicy food. My partner is a southeastern Asian woman, who enjoys a bit less spicy food. I find it easier if we just order for each other and swap plates when the food comes. Because the servers assume that I can’t handle spice, and my partner can. Which is incorrect. Also, my partner isn’t very happy about it.
I moved recently and tried a Thai place down the street. The guy asked if I wanted mild, medium, or spicy, and I said spicy. He said :No, I think mild." I didn’t know what to say and he added “…but you can have it however you want.” I decided to try medium.
He came by after and asked how the spiciness was, and I said it was just a little spicier than I like it (I ate it without issue), and he said “I told you!”
You just gotta know whose palate it’s balanced for. Taco bell is meant for white people. Their hottest sauce has a maybe jalapeño-level spice to it (and it tastes like shit). Go to any legit Thai or Indian place and their medium will destroy the hottest you can get at any tex-mex chain.
Is it racist to say Taco Bell is meant for white people?
Since it is TexMex, a food that was practically invented for white people, I would say no.
Just a casual reminder that this guy is a Mexican, raised in Mexico City.
Looked it up (under “Early life” on Wikipedia). Born in Washington D.C. actually, but his father is of Mexican and Hungarian-Jewish descent and the family lived his first 7 years in Mexico.
Born in Washington D.C. actually
That’s actually the reason I couldn’t use the phrase “born & bred”, because it would’ve been inaccurate. However, it is accurate to say he’s Mexican (has dual US & Mexico citizenship) and grew up (spent most of his formative years) in Mexico City.
Edit whops I said “raised in” not “grew up in”.
We really need a decent scale for spicyness of foods. The mild/medium/spicy thing is by far too unspecific.
There’s an Indian place down the road that we sometimes order from. I like moderate levels of spicy, so it works well for me. But my wife dislikes hot spicy foods at all. So when I ordered the food I asked if the dish is completely non-spicy, and they confirmed that it was completely non-spicy, and it was too spicy for my wife.
Scoville?
cassandrafatigue already suggested that, and I answered below that: https://lemmy.world/comment/21043110
deleted by creator
Afaik scoville only works for chilli peppers. It doesn’t work for other spicy things like e.g. pepper and it doesn’t work for prepared dishes either.
So you can say “This dish contains chilli peppers with X scoville”, but since the amount of chilli in there also matters, that’s only part of the equation. For example, a single drop of 100 000 scoville chilli pepper on a whole plate of otherwise non-spicy food might be less spicy than e.g. a dish consisting almost entirely of 30 000 scoville chilli peppers.
There’s math to be done here.
Seems like something where you could ask where eating a whole jalapeno falls on their spiciness scale, because that’s a very mild pepper and as someone who likes moderate spice and enjoys jalapeno based dishes, that seems like a very good anchor to start with
That’s not a bad idea, actually.
Maybe that could replace the scale actually. “This dish is equivalent to 5 pepper corns. This one here is equivalent to a jalapeno. This one is equivalent to a habanero.” and so on.
Seriously, why is the Diablo sauce so foul? I always get fire sauce because it actually tastes good. But I want it with more heat!
Honestly the mild sauce taste better, even though I like really spicy like ghost pepper+ levels of heat I get mild at Taco Bell on the rare occasion I go.
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be that way, but it so often is. I like the Herndez brand mexican salsa you get at the grocery store (US), but the flavor of the medium is so much better than the flavor of the hot. It’s like with the hot ones, the only care about getting the heat.
I’ve had very hot sauces that had really good flavor, it just seems more rare.
That should be the default spicy, so when I say ‘very mild’ it’s doesn’t turn out sweet.
I’d say yes. Yes that’s racist.
Lol, no this is not racist. Jesus, Lemmy seems to be filled with real sensitive white folk.
Judging someone’s personality or their likes/dislikes by their ethnicity is definitely racist, I don’t see how you could possibly argue it isn’t?
Of course it’s a bit racist, but not offensive. Nobody’s going to be losing sleep over someone assuming they can’t handle spice based on their skin colour.
If you define racism as prejudice based on perceived race, then sure. If you take a more academic definition, such as this one from Wikipedia
Racism can also be said to describe a condition in society in which a dominant racial group benefits from the oppression of others, whether that group wants such benefits or not.
Then this scenario not so much.
Do you not notice the “can” in your excerpt?
And no, no, no. Don’t try to play off your chosen definition of racism as the ‘academic’ one, and imply any other definitions are wrong. That’s not how this works.
Literally the first line on Wikipedia, your chosen source:
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race or ethnicity over another.
But here’s some other sources:
The belief that there are different races of people with different characteristics and abilities, and that some races are better than others; a general belief about a whole group of people based only on their race
- Oxford dictionary
Harmful or unfair things that people say, do, or think based on the belief that their own race makes them more intelligent, good, moral, etc. than people of other races.
- Cambridge dictionary
The belief that each race has distinct and intrinsic attributes.
- American Heritage dictionary
All of these describe this scenario perfectly. I’m not really sure why you’re so ready to defend such a mildly racist situation.
Uh… Okay. You asked how someone could possibly argue that it isn’t racist, and I provided a path for that.
I didn’t say nor mean to imply that the more colloquial definitions are wrong. I was saying that if you are considering racism to be about oppression along racial lines, then a white guy being given mold sauce isn’t it. The “if” there is doing a lot of work.
The more commonly used sense of the word “racism” checks out here.
‘White’ isn’t an ethnicity.
Making a small assumption about someone’s hot sauce preferences isn’t racist nor prejudiced; that’s just making a generalization.
There is no hostility in that generalization; no injustice is befalling the white man.
Clutch your pearls and continue to desperately vie for offense. You are parody, not polemic.
‘White’ isn’t an ethnicity.
“Black” isn’t a single ethnicity either, so by your logic it’s impossible to be racist to them?
Making a small assumption about someone’s hot sauce preferences isn’t racist nor prejudiced; that’s just making a generalization.
Generalising based on someone’s race is racism, surely you know that?
If an Asian walked into my restaurant and I looked him up and down and said “you should probably have the fried rice”, that would be racist.
It doesn’t matter whether there’s “injustice” to the statement, or whether he took offence. It’d still be a racist statement.
Clutch your pearls and continue to desperately vie for offense
The only one doing that here is you. As I’ve already stated, it’s so mild a form of racism that I doubt anybody cares. But it’s still racism. Racism that you feel very passionately should be protected or encouraged.
Someone being treated differently soley because of their race, how is that not fucking racism
NGL, getting profiled as a tender tongue is pretty fucking annoying. The only thing worse than no spice is mild spice.
My go-to has been to tell the waiter, “If you make it so spicy I can’t eat it, I’ll double your tip.” It’s a dangerous game, but it often pays off.
Back when subway was popular, I would jokingly tell the workers to try and kill me with jalapenos. One time they took it seriously and II had an inch thick layer across the whole sandwich. I was tickled pink, though pickled jalapenos kind of stink, and my coworkers about died.
Truth. The one time i went with pickup instead of delivery for indian food, i swear my food from then on was suddenly more mild. I really like the heat :/
tender tongue
Incredible phase
The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.
And joking about it rubs a very small pinch of salt on the wound…
Mmm. Spice.
Yep.
My old manager used to take his team out to a Szechuan Chinese place and order for us, family style. It was awesome.
I’m white AF and it was the first time I had actually spicy Chinese food. He’d also order a few mild dishes for the pair of no-spice folk on the team.
Thinking back, manager was a Chinese immigrant, most team mates were Indian immigrants, and the spice-free teammates were both white. (I mention immigrant because my Indian teammates with kids would complain about their American-born kids’ low spice tolerance.)
Lmao speaking of immigrants complaining of how their kids like to eat, I have a Russian coworker who complains about how her kids only want to eat unhealthy American food and not the food she cooks.
Maybe she’s just a shite cook
I was an extremely picky eater as a kid.
Bitching and screaming when told I had to eat my veggies, all that stuff.
Wasn’t until I moved out for college that I realized that a lot of that came from the fact that my moms cooking was shite.
My poor mother tried so hard, but yeah, combining foods into an interesting dish is not an easy thing. It didn’t help that she has never understood the joke about a wife replacing every ingredient in someone’s favorite dish and then complaining they didn’t enjoy it.
Now as a burgeoning cook, I, too, wish I could sometimes just have the skill to properly spice dishes and mix vegetables into actual flavor instead of another weird combo that is palatable but definitely not ‘good.’
I don’t think so. She’s brought some desserts in for potlucks before and they’ve been awesome.
Nope, kids like garbage. Probably designed the food to be addictive. Better off banning American processed food.
One of my indian coworkers from a few jobs back always used to ask for Tabasco when we went out to lunch together.
It always made my smile that on every coffee shop they assumed my girlfriend was drinking latte and I read drinking black Turkish coffee, when it was the other way around.
It was a bit embarrassing at the beginning, but then I remembered I was a college student and she was in the army, so any attempt of being the strong one in the relationship was already out the window
Whenever my wife and I are at a restaurant and someone that is not our server brings the food to the table they always assume the vegetarian plate is hers and the one with meat on it is mine. They always seem confused when it is the other way around.
