Surviving Hell Week At The East Coast Grill
The East Coast Grill in Cambridge has a Halloween tradition called Hell Week. During Hell Week, a special guest chef comes in and creates dishes that are hellishly hot and spicy and the employees have on costumes ( one guy half assed it with a don't tase me bro t-shirt. Someone should have told him those shirts where soo 2 and a half weeks ago). When my 3 friends from work and I first arrived, the place was packed and even though we had reservations, it still took a while for us to actually be seated. On the menu, each meal is rated with a certain number of bombs. The higher number of bombs the hotter the meal. The hottest item on the menu was the pasta from hell that was claimed to be made with the hottest peppers in the world which we decided to order as an appetizer. Before we could order, we had to sign a release form stating that we where aware of the possible negative health effects that eating something so hot could have. At first, we took this as a joke, but then we heard the chants. "Antidote, Antidote, Antidote, Antidote, Wimp, Wimp, Wimp." A guy across from us could not handle the pasta and requested the pasta's antidote which turned out to be a orange cream pop which led to the waiters and then many customers chanting wimp wimp. Soon our pasta arrived, and with much apprehension all 4 of us took a bite. The instant it hit your tongue you felt a rush of a burning sensation, then followed by a slight cool down. About a minute later it got really hot again and it kinda made your lips numb. That being said, I still thought it was going to be hotter. We ended up not finishing the plate half because of the hotness and half because there was not really a taste to it aside from the burning sensation. When our meals arrived, all of us thought they did not taste that hot as they where supposed because they did not compare to the pasta from hell. However, they where extremely delicious. My swordfish plate was had interesting spices to it and was a great piece of fish which is my favorite dish. (well not really, but I had to do the Rakim line) My friends duck and steak dishes that I sampled where just as good. So overall I would recommend the experiences even if that spicy dishes did not lead to bodily harm as promised by some past attendees testimonials. For more info on hell week, go here: http://www.hotsauceblog.com/hotsaucearchives/hell-nights-at-the-east-coast-grill/ or here: http://eastcoastgrill.net/
I teach cooking at a school in Newton called create a cook.
During the summer we have 'camp' weeks with themes. One week was BBQ with my 11-13 year old crowd.
They all took a field trip to East Coast Grill to meet Chris and the staff and the next day we made Chris' pasta form hell.
The Scotch Bonnet or Habenero is supposed to hit about 100,000 to 300,000 on the scale (compare to a jalepeno at 2,500). I worked the kids all up telling them about the peppers, the scale the antidotes (milk or bread or beer), wearing gloves to cut the peppers, don't touch your eyes (or worse) with the capsaicin still on your hands etc.
We made the pasta. First none would eat it. Then one braved it, then another one until finally they all had some. In fact one girl liked the heat so much she came up and asked me to sprinkle extra chopped pepper on hers.
She was fine, eating away and then when she was done she realised her mouth wouldn't stop burning. The poor thing had braces and all the chili pepper pieces had gotten stuck in the far corners of her braces. It took her about an hour to finally poke them all out one by one with a skewer.
Twas really rather amusing.
But they were all quite proud of themselves for having eaten it and I told them they all now had bragging rights.
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