Today, our office celebrated early Cinco de Mayo with a taco party at the end of the day. One of my colleagues, who has a newfound fascination with the “hottest hot sauces in the world” as he discovered through some TV show he watched. He proceeded to buy a bottle of Mad Dog 357 hot sauce, which is supposedly so hot that some people vomit or have really bad… bowel movements after.

I’ve never really been attracted to heat for the sake of heat in food. Spice needs to complement flavors, not exist solely for the purpose of burning one’s mouth. But I actually do love hot food, and I have a pretty high tolerance for it given the Vietnamese food my mom brought me up with, plus my love of Southeast Asian and South Asian food in general, plus Sichuanese spices.

So when it came down to taco time, multiple guys in my office were crying, red faced and eyed after trying the hot sauce. I had it… and was pretty fine. It definitely burned my tongue and I got a bit hot, but it cooled down after about half an hour, and I was one of two people (both women) who actually was able to tolerate it just fine. It’s comical when a bunch of macho guys start crying over a lick of hot sauce and the women are actually the ones who can handle it extremely well.