2018 - a spice odyssey: In search of the spiciest food in Tarrant County

When you are on a quest for the spiciest food in Tarrant County, the Oni Reaper seems the most logical place to start. The ramen dish — at Oni Ramen in Fort Worth and Dallas — gets its name from the Carolina Reaper, considered the hottest commercially available pepper on the market.

How hot? A Carolina Reaper pepper measures over 1.5 million on the Scoville Heat Unit Scale, according to the website of the appropriately named PuckerButt Pepper Co., which markets the pepper.

For perspective, a jalapeño is about 10,000 to 20,000 Scoville units; a ghost pepper starts at 855,000 Scoville units but can get up to more than a million. But not 1.5 million.

And I'm about to slurp the Reaper for a Star-Telegram video shoot.

The first time I had the Reaper, I was advised to get the spice on the side, and add it gradually. I got about a quarter of the spice in before the bowl became tear-inducing. And the spice sinks into the broth, so the dish gets hotter as you go along.

But now I am eating it full-strength as part of my countywide quest — a quest that isn't complete, but you know, my editor had to give me a deadline eventually.

Full-strength includes not just the Carolina Reaper spices, but scorpion pepper, ghost pepper, habanero "seven pot" and Aleppo peppers.

I'm kinda proud of myself. I only choke once, and that's early on, when some of the broth hits the back of my throat, setting things on fire. But my eyes are watering, my lips are burning and I'm about to break into a sweat, and afterward, my head feels clear for hours. Not just my sinuses, but my head, as if part of my brain has been steam-cleaned.

"We have a few people a week go full-strength," Jesus Garcia, Oni Ramen's chef-owner, told me during an earlier phone interview. "Out of those people, not everyone finishes it. They usually can finish the noodles but not the broth, they can't do it all by themselves."

He was right. I do leave the broth alone after the noodles, the pork belly, the soft-boiled egg and the other ingredients — all of which have a balancing effect on the spices — are gone.

"I think it's one of the spiciest dishes around the DFW area," Garcia says. "But to me, it's like a good flavor, too. We use about a quarter-teaspoon of the spice, so there's not that much in there. But that little bit goes a long way."

During his pre-Oni Ramen life, Garcia worked at Little Lilly Sushi in west Fort Worth, where he would occasionally have customers ask how spicy he could make something, which was part of the inspiration behind the Reaper.

"They'd want to challenge themselves or challenge the chef or whatever," he says. "We have a couple of people who come in once or twice a week just to eat that dish because of how spicy it is, and they finish the whole thing."

There are people in this world who don't like spicy food. Why set your tongue, lips, throat, eyes, sweat glands and, um, digestive system ablaze? But then there are people like me — and people who want things even hotter than I do.

Where the Zest begins

A lot of those people turn up every year — to sample, to sell or both — at Zest Fest, a celebration of spicy foods, comes to Irving (and formerly to Fort Worth, but the location changed a few years ago). It's usually in January (the countdown for next year has already started) at the Irving Convention Center, where I have covered a couple of Comic Cons.

So think of Zest Fest as spice con: The atmosphere is similar, with vendors hawking their wares, only instead of comic books, DVDs and "Star Wars"-inspired merchandise, you get salsas, hot sauces, rubs, BBQ sauces, jams, jellies, candies, drinks and other things with a spicy kick. You won't see as many people in costume, although there was someone walking around dressed as a chile pepper. There are buffalo-wing-eating contests and jalapeño-eating contests, and celebrity-chef demonstrations (Fort Worth chef Jon Bonnell was one of this year's chefs).

In the week running up to ZestFest, there is judging for the "Fiery Food Challenge," and work on this story led to an invitation to judge. I took two shifts, a morning and afternoon on a Wednesday, the last day of judging. It was a little overwhelming: A parade of condiments and spices comes to the table, in categories ranging from "mild/medium" to "ultra." Even then, more experienced judges were saying that the "ultras" should come toward the end of a round because after you've tried one, it's awhile before you can taste anything else.

And some of these judges — many of whom also judged two shifts on Monday and Tuesday — have been doing this for a long time. Head judge Jim Chambers says this is at least his 15th year judging.

"[I've] always liked spicy foods, growing up in New Mexico and loving the New Mexican style of Mexican food," Chambers says in a later email (as a former New Mexico resident who looks forward to all the Hatch chile fests in DFW ever year, I can relate). When Chambers served in the Navy, he discovered the spicy cuisines of Thailand and Vietnam.

Chambers' big background, however, is in barbecue: He was in charge of cooking BBQ dinners for groups in the 301st Maintenance Squadron at what was then Carswell Air Force Base, as well as cooking barbecue dinners for the squadron during its deployments.

A couple of friends who had worked with him approached him, looking for judges for what was then the Fiery Food Festival and is now ZestFest.

"The BBQ industry is deeply embedded in the hot sauce industry, in my opinion," he says. "This a very special group of people that treats everyone within the group just like family. No matter if you are from New Mexico or New Zealand."

They are also very nice, telling me the best things to cool off with after judging a particularly hot item. There is a selection of fruits, cheeses, breads, milk and yogurt. Turns out yogurt is best for "ultra." Good to know. Maybe I'll bring some with me the next time I have the Reaper full strength.

Some like it hot — and hotter

I've been a spicy-food eater since I was a teen-ager — when you grow up in El Paso, it sort of comes with the territory. I've actually mellowed a bit. These days, I look for things that will clear my sinuses but won't blow my palate. But during conversations for this story, over and over again I heard about people wanting hotter and hotter food.

Mrs. Renfro's, the Fort Worth-based salsa/sauce/pepper company, has been kicking up the heat in its products for a few years, responding to a customer demand with such products as a Ghost Pepper Salsa with a "caution: very hot" warning on the label.

Of course, some people want it spicy, even to the point of avoiding a mild salsa. "I've seen people have some of our peach salsa and head for the water fountain," company president Doug Renfro says.

Pat Haggerty, president of Pendery's World of Chiles & Spices, another Fort Worth-based spicy-food purveyor, says he believes that people are just wired to their spice levels.

"You've actually got in your genetics different receptors that you like or dislike certain things, like says bitterness vs. sweet," Haggerty says. "Some people like the spicy foods because they receive it well, and others not so much so."

Pendery's supplies some Fort Worth restaurants, and its Eighth Avenue shop is a maze of rubs, sauces, spices and just plain peppers, including the Carolina Reaper and the scorpion peppers. Haggerty notes that with the explosion of restaurants in the past decade or so, some places are putting their hottest foot forward in an effort to set themselves off.

"Spices are really cheap," he says. "If you are a chef, you're selling nothing but flavor. And spices, for a lot of people, are really exciting. .... As you get older, and you mature a little bit, you want some excitement and flavor. If you think how much time you spend [eating], you might as well enjoy it."

Haggerty is surprised a little bit, though, but spicy-food lovers who want their food even spicier.

""I like chili, and if it doesn't make my bald head sweat a little bit, it's probably not hot enough," Haggerty says. "But at the same time, if you put too much heat in it, you don't taste it. Yet people seem to like it hotter and hotter. .... I think sometimes your senses get used to it, therefore they get dulled, but it doesn't honestly make sense to me."

And maybe there's a bit of an ulterior motive to this. "I've seen people come in and say, 'I want to taste the hottest thing you've got — and I'm going to give it to my brother-in-law.'" he says. "I've never figured that out. Does that mean you don't like your brother-in-law?"

This story was originally published March 28, 2018 at 10:21 AM with the headline "2018 - a spice odyssey: In search of the spiciest food in Tarrant County."