Last winter we had an interesting thread about who had the hottest, fieriest, burn-your-face-off spicy dish in town, and as I recall, the contenders ended up between some dishes at Vietnam Kitchen and Sala Thai when they make them as hot as you ask.
I think I've found a new contendah, though, in the Mexican category.
Went to El Tarasco in St. Matthews the other night, not working, just dining out with my visiting sister and her husband, and I got the <i>camarones alla diabola</i> ("shrimp, devil's style").
Wooooieeeeeeee! You talk about HOT! This is basically a generous mound of small, perfectly cooked shrimp in a bright-red chile sauce that's obviously made with habanero sauce as well as more traditional hot chilies. Hot hot HOT! It comes with just frijoles and rice and a few tortillas to roll it up in, and that's all you need. This is seriously good stuff, and it kept the endorphins pumping. $11.99 for the dish at dinner, I believe.
Aside, I find the El Tarasco, Los Aztecas and El Nopalito local mini-chains all very similar, even down to having menus that are hard to tell one from another. They're more bilingual than the taquerias and thus easier for Anglos to navigate, and still seem reasonably authentic to me. But, bottom line, I find myself gravitating more and more to El Tarasco as having a slight edge over the other two in terms of food and value. Comments?
