Good evening. I’m Senor Weaselo, and this is House of Pain, a sporadic foray into gastrointestinal discomfort that asks the question, “How much hot sauce can one consume until they combust?” That’s a good question, and maybe we’ll find an answer for it, in which case you’re all invited to my wake, there will be music. Let’s go adventurin’, shall we?

When you think of hot sauce, what do you think of in terms of the food that we use as its vessel? The most common two answers would be tacos and wings. I’m not sure what it is about the wing being so fitting, I’m not gonna go into the history of the buffalo wing, that’s Yeah Right’s area of expertise since he’s a far better cook than I will ever be and he probably knows his shit. But since the original buffalo wing’s hot sauce and butter coating, man has wondered what else works on chicken. Like more and shit-tons hotter sauce! And then the sauces come in all sorts of flavors in addition to being hotter. And that’s a wonderful thing considering we have entire events about that nowadays.

On Black Friday while everyone else was forgetting the true meaning of Festivus I went out to lunch with a friend of mine to Pelicana Chicken, which as I later learned is one of the main Korean fried chicken chains. (I knew Bonchon and Kyochon, did not know Pelicana, and I don’t think she knew that either, we kinda randomly picked a spot in the area, as people do when they’re not totally sure what they want to do for lunch.) Because it’s me and I’m curious about these things and everyone knows my blood runs at 5,000 Scovilles, I asked how hot the spicy fried wing with the spiciest sauce gets, and the server said “Don’t worry dude, I talked to the chef and he can make it mad spicy.” Hells to the yes. (No, she did not get the same.) Also got a side of the sauce because why not, got to check, make sure it’s that good shit, right? None of this weak sauce (pun slightly intended). And it wasn’t! It had a nice garlic, sweet chili taste, and unlike so many sauces that start hot and quickly fade, the heat stayed constant through out (not increasing, that’s when you’re in trouble), even a small fork dip you could tell it was pretty damn good and had a nice kick. I can’t say for sure what’s in it, and a quick check of the Googles didn’t help, because I guarantee it’s hotter than your ordinary gochujang, even if it’s Yeah Right’s Sunday Gravy version.

Also what is it about Korean fried chicken places that their wings are absolutely massive? Maybe we filled up on other appetizers, but neither of us could finish our wings, and it’s not like we got 20 wings each, they came as things of 8. I had four for lunch, Padre Weaselo poached one (he was taken aback by the heat), and as I’m writing this sentence we ate like 9 and a half hours ago and I’m still too full to take down the remaining three.

As you can see from the picture above of the leftovers (I didn’t take a before pic because 1, I didn’t think I’d need to because I didn’t think “Hey, I should write this up” until after I had eaten and 2, it would have seemed impolite because we had just talked about how she stopped foodblogging and then I would be doing that oh goddammit I’m doing a hipster millenial thing Fozz is gonna kill me), it’s a sticky sauce (phrasing). And that doesn’t include the bottom of the plate (no it wasn’t served in the to-go tin) which had some drip-off. So yeah, they went all out for it, and I approved. I approved less mid-conversation where a bit of sauce hit the back of my throat the wrong way and I had to let out a cough (PHRASING). This happened more than once. When I admitted I was done, I said it wasn’t my tongue that had betrayed me (never truly overpowered, but definitely more at my limits than I ever expected), but my stomach; I was full, even if it was a heat-induced fullness.

For me tearing up with a smile on my face, as opposed to the tearing up I did after that Carolina reaper because that shit fucking hurt, means I’ve found a keeper (the sauce, again, although my friend is also very lovely—I see you wiseasses smirking, don’t make me come over there). So do I approve? Yes. Now I better finish those wings, I don’t want them to get too cold in the fridge, and then I won’t feel guilty when I go for the rest of my belated birthday Joffre cake.

Senor Weaselo ate the remaining three wings (they were slightly more manageable cold) and then had two glasses of brioschi, which is the Italian version of Alka-Seltzer. His stomach was not happy overnight. Or the next day, for that matter, considering he had two straight meals of hot wings. The cake was finished over the next few days. It was delicious. I tried to google locations in the U.S. but the site doesn’t have a list of restaurants; we went to the one in Flushing, Queens which was the first U.S. location.

Banner image courtesy of TVTropes.