Cool Down With 3 of the Spiciest Dishes in Los Angeles

The idea of eating anything beyond a crisp, cool salad, paleta, or maybe a slice of ice cream cake during these triple digit dog days of lingering summer seems unappealing. But as counterintuitive as it might seem...perhaps even crazy...it's spicy foods which offers the best temporary antidote for keeping your cool.

One only has to look to equatorial cultures to realize what the people of the tropics have long known: spicy food helps cool down the body. Capascin-infused foods not only provoke the taste buds, inducing the audible salivatory inhale, but also unleashes gustatory facial perspiration across the forehead and nose. The autonomic response of sweat helps produce a cooling sensation through the phenomena of evaporation, its effects often appearing as tell-tale sweat beads decorating the nose and dripping down the forehead.

I like to turn on my inner air conditioner response regularly with a handful of corn chips dusted with ghost pepper powder or liven up an eggs breakfast with a deceptively sweet Carolina Reaper hot sauce produced here in Venice. But sometimes it's best to get out and let someone else do the work for you over the course of a meal:

Chung King Hot Pot at Yun Chuan Garden:
There's a palpable energy resonating through Yun Chuan Garden, a buzz that could be attributed to the emotions of impatience and enthusiasm infecting everyone coming here to enjoy Sichuan and Yunnan cuisine specialties. It might also be because the food here can be incredibly spicy, and like any great experience, agitating a whole range of emotions. A great many diners will be heads down in a bowl of Yun Chuan Garden's signature (and generally benign), Crossing-the-bridge noodles. But note the dominance of maroon plates washed across the dining room and it becomes clear its in your best interest to order something designated with at least one chili pepper on the menu.

I went all in, ordering the house special, Chung King Hot Pot [shown up top]. Marked with three chili peppers on the menu, a caldron of lava piled with a reddened orgy of boiled fish, chicken, bean curd skin, mushrooms, konjac, noodles, bean sprouts, greens, and an improbable amount of red chili peppers appear to challenge spoons and chopsticks like your very own miniature Battle of Thermopylae. You'll eventually succumb to the odds, but there's always a takeout box to continue the battle back home.

Dynamite Spicy Challenge at Jitlada:
There's a running joke amongst Thai food devotees: "there's spicy, and then there's Thai spicy". All too often I've witnessed Thai waiters interrogate those exhibiting suspect spice-handling constitution with a tsk-tsk attitude, steering the weaker to the safer harbors of Mild Bay. Because when turned up to its hottest, certain Thai dishes are capable of inducing ear ringing and crazed euphoric expressions worthy of an Instagram memento.

Way back in 2007 Jonathan Gold may have sacrificed a few years of his life enduring what he then called "the spiciest food you can eat in Los Angeles". Jitlada later decided with Spinal Tap glee they could take it to "11" and introduced the Dynamite Spicy Challenge. Diners can now risk morning after regrets by choosing between equally fiery Southern Thai mint leaf or curry sauce to accompany beef, tofu, chicken, lobster tail or even frog legs, a menu item which comes with its own warning, "If you do not eat spicy food, do not order this! This is Real Chili, Real Spicy!" If one believes the hottest day deserves the hottest dish, this is probably it.

Chiles Toreados at Guisados
Habaneros, Fresnos, serranos, jalapeños, and green thai chili peppers are all formidably hot individually. Served all together and drizzled with a hazard suit orange habanero sauce with black beans inside a tortilla, the Guisados Chiles Toreados taco has earned a reputation for combusting tongues, lips, throats, small children, and animals wandering too close to the hot pepper convention. "Adjustments kindly declined," says it all, politely revealing a no-compromise, turn-down-for-what challenge hotter than anything else on Guisado's otherwise moderately spiced menu. There's also a surprising sweetness which can sometimes leap above the heat produced by the blistered peppers in this taco, a pleasant reward for sticking things through with a devilish lunch partner. Horchata helps...but just a little bit.

Yun Chuan Garden
301 N Garfield Ave, Ste B
Monterey Park, CA 91754

Jitlada
5233 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027

Guisados (2 locations)
2100 E Cesar Chavez Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90033

1261 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026