On location: the restaurant is closed to loyal customers while the taste testing is filmed.
Most people around the world grow up learning the basics at a young age. For example, we learn that rain is wet. We learn that sharp knives can cut. And we learn that sticking a pin down your urethra can lead to some regrets. Society’s jury, however, has apparently been out for a number of years on whether Indian Curry could be considered to be, beyond all doubt, “hot”. This changed on the weekend when Fuji-TV sent four C-grade celebrities to an Indian Restaurant with a goal to settle the argument, make a cheap one hour program, create a bit of advertising revenue, and perhaps make Thomas Edison turn in his grave at the same time.
Now, the “hotness” of food can sometimes be quite subjective. Not everyone at a table will agree as to whether food is uncomfortably hot or not. That’s why Fuji-TV wisely chose to send four people to the much maligned Shanai Indian Restaurant in Oji.
Doing it for the people: These men take risks with exotic food – so you don’t have to.
After the four men, whose names we can’t remember, took their seats, they started by reading the menu aloud to one another. The (very likely contrived) mispronunciations of the items on the menu were apparently hilarious, as the celebrities cried with laughter at attempts to say Onion Baghi, Samosa, and Rogan Josh.
Various items were then brought to the table for the much anticipated tasting session. Predictably, milder dishes were presented first, followed by the more challenging spicier dishes. The coup de gras was the burn-your-tits-off-hot Bangalore Phal, of which each celebrity was provided. After a prolonged game of Jan-Ken-Pon, or paper-rock-scissors, to decide who the first taste-tester would be, one of the celebrities finally tried the steaming Phal. Upon stuffing a large portion into his mouth, he winced in over-dramatic fashion while frantically gesturing for water. As he motioned desperately, the other three celebrities gleefully pointed at him, asking repeatedly, “Is it hot? Is it hot?” When the first taste-tester replied in the affirmative and nodded slightly, the other three laughed together saying, “He said it’s hot! He said it’s hot!”
This was just the word of one man, however. The show didn’t finish until all four men had sampled the bound-to-burn-at-the-other-end-too Bangalore Phal, allowing basically the same scene to be replayed three times and stretch the program out to an hour. The taste testers all concluded that Indian curry is indeed hot, providing just a little bit of education through entertainment to millions of bored housewives.
The quartet’s next task? At the time of writing, that hadn’t been announced. However, it is this journalist’s wish that they tackle the age old mystery; does it hurt to have a daikon shoved roughly up one’s bumhole.
