“Is it Spicy?”
AdventureMan and I have wide ranging taste in dining out, as you know if you are a regular reader of this blog. We like Barbecue, we like Mexican, we like Vietnamese, we like Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Seafood. There is one food we do not like – tasteless food. We like TASTE.
Living here in the South, we will often see a group come into a restaurant, and one person – always a lady – will ask the waitress “Is it spicy?”
Spicy doesn’t mean fiery hot, spicy means pretty much anything other than the food’s natural taste plus salt – they do use a lot of salt in food here. At one restaurant, the waitress said “no, it’s not spicy, but there is a little bit of horseradish in the cocktail sauce” and the little lady said “oh, then I had better order something else.”
It’s all a matter of taste, what your palette is used to, and what it craves.
I wonder, too, if it isn’t what we are trained to expect – for example, some Nigerian friends once told us that from the time their children are babies, they give them little bites of hot hot pepper with their food. I think many of our restaurants add sugar, as well as salt, so that we have become more and more addicted to sweetness.
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Amazina
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Here There and Everywhere 
looooooooool. you’re not living in the south – you’re living in the Levant!
Intlxpatr :
How about resturants that add Aji-no-moto (MSG), the other day i went to resturant that must have used this additive and when i finished the meal i felt my tongue stuck to the upper side of my mouth
Little Diamond – It’s the same in Beirut? Damascus?
Daggero – Oh no! Sometimes it makes my skin flush! Did you know you can request “No MSG?” When we lived in Kuwait, we often ate at China Queen, and she always knew we wanted “no MSG.”