Death Curry Ravages AnandTech; Future Postings in Jeopardy

Las Vegas is a city of many vices: gambling, women, drink, and Mint Indian Bistro’s Inferno Curry. Some of these may be more tempting to you than others, but thanks to Ganesh we ended up at the Mint Indian Bistro for dinner. Stupidity tends to run in crowds, sadly, and when Brian and Jarred opened the menu and were greeted by the Inferno Curry page, somehow the group was convinced to sign a waiver and order a bowl of pure, chunky death. The foolhardy souls who signed their name to the below death warrant consist of Anand Shimpi, Chris Heinonen, Brian Klug, and Jarred Walton—with Stephen Hornbrook joining them. Rest In Peace.

As you might expect with such warnings, the resulting curry was hot—very hot! The curry contains a special blend of ghost naga chilis, habeneros, seranos, jalepenos, and perhaps a dash or two of hellfire thrown in just for good measure. From the first bite it takes about five seconds for your taste buds screaming in agony to reach your ears. Then your whole mouth lights on fire, your eyes begin to water, and if you’re eating on an empty stomach…well, may God have mercy on your soul. The initial shock isn’t even the worst of it; I think the heat/pain peaks at about a minute after first contact, but it maintains that level for at least five minutes. And that’s with something to help cool off your mouth, like the mango lassi we had—it’s unfortunate that there was no way to hook a fire hose up to the mango lassi dispenser.

The good news is that after the first real bite of the Inferno Curry, your whole definition of hot will have changed, rendering all the remaining spicy Indian food rather mild by comparison. “Still feeling the heat from the curry? Why not suck on some jalapenos to cool your mouth off?” On a scale of 1 to 10, with the Inferno of Death naturally taking the ten spot, pretty much everything you can find at a local food store rates as a two or less. The second and third bites of death actually didn’t seem quite so hot, but after half a dozen bites even the most stalwart among us (Brian and Jarred…idiots!) were ready to call it quits. The concern now is simply this: what will happen before morning? There’s an awful lot of heat still churning in our gullets, so if nothing gets posted tomorrow, you’ll know why.

I should note that there’s actually a challenge at the Mint Indian Bistro: if you can finish off the whole dish, you get your picture on the wall along with a $50 gift certificate for return visits. We’ve got a lot of readers, and I’m sure some of you are in the Vegas area on occasion. The best of us came nowhere near finishing the dish, and even a good whiff of the curry was enough to warn at least one person away. As for the wall of fame, at present there are all of 11 people proudly showing that they have serious willpower—that or they simply can’t taste heat. If you stop by and give the curry a try, though, tell the owners hello from AnandTech—the rest of the non-killer food was actually quite good, in case you’re wondering. Maybe next year we can treat a few lucky souls to the experience, assuming we survive the night.

Goodnight from CES. We’re all heading home tomorrow, after our final meetings. We hope you’ve enjoyed the show coverage at least as much as we enjoyed the curry!