They say the greatest award any journalist can receive is to be assassinated by the CIA.
The second greatest? Getting paid to subject yourself to tongue torture via spicy poultry. At least that’s how I chose to view it when the Racket team asked me to eat some chicken sandwiches from two chains newish to the Twin Cities—California-based Dave's Hot Chicken and Virginia-based Hangry Joe's—that require legal waivers to purchase their highest heat levels.
Much like any other Midwesterner, my childhood taco nights consisted of soft-shell tortillas, lightly seasoned ground beef, and shredded cheese, so spice is not my forte. But in the name of stunt journalism, I put my sensitive gut on the line to find out just how spicy these sandwiches really are. What follows is a story of self-discovery, spiritual turmoil, dairy-related disappointment, and chicken mural antagonism.
Dave’s Hot Chicken | Scoville: 1.6 to 2 Million
At Dave’s Hot Chicken off of Ford Parkway in St. Paul's Highland Park neighborhood, I ordered the No. 3—one tender and one sandwich prepared at the “Reaper” spice level.
The cashier printed out the waiver on a sheet of receipt paper, and I signed my life away while skimming through its warnings. Turns out I’d relinquished any legal recourse related to bodily injury, property damage, emotional distress, or even death I may incur from eating the sandwich.
Most of that didn’t surprise me—death had to be thrown in there just in case, I suppose. Property damage seemed like an odd addition, though based on what the next day had in store for me, that was a good call on the part of the Dave’s Hot Chicken legal team. Here's what Racket's ace lawyer, Blake Iverson from EastLake Legal, had to say after reviewing the waiver...
These are fun. The Dave's waiver is exactly what a lawyer would typically advise: If you're inviting someone to do something dangerous, cover your ass by saying, "We warned you. You can't sue us."
Inside Dave's, I sat and waited anxiously for my food with my tiny water cup. I figured water would be my friend in the coming gauntlet, but a wiser man might’ve coughed up the dough for a larger cup. Then again, a wiser man wouldn’t be sitting inside a chicken joint at 8 p.m. on a weekday waiting for a sandwich so hot it could theoretically kill him.
Murals of the restaurant's odd hybrid chicken-man mascot (Dave himself?), shredding on a UFO like a skateboard and driving a race car, adorned the walls; “Revvin’ up the heat!” screamed a neon sign. At first glance, the mascot seemed like a chill chicken-man overseeing my journey. Soon, I’d see him for the villain he truly is.
My meal arrived without any daunting visual indictors—no bright reds, no corrosive sizzles. It just looked like chicken, and good chicken at that.
I took my first bite of the sandwich and… it wasn’t that bad. For about five seconds.
The heat quickly enveloped my tongue, and by bite three (I chomped away in quick succession; I’d already failed an eating challenge for Racket and was determined to see this one though) I was racing to refill my stupidly small cup. I drank a few cupfuls standing at the fountain, hoping none of my fellow diners noticed the erratic behavior. Munching on ice cubes would power me through my next few bites, but it could only take me so far.
After a few more bites, my lips began swelling, my body gushed sweat, and my tummy started turnin’. The ice worked as a stopgap for the pain, though after taking a 10-minute breather, I knew I had to lock in for my final push as furious flames ravaged my mouth and mind.
While questioning many of my life choices, especially this hot chicken assignment, I deployed a new plan of attack: going to the bathroom. You see, my initial strategy—sprint through several bites in a row, nurse wounds with water and ice—backfired because of that dinky cup. Enter the bathroom sink.
For two to three more blurry rounds of heat sprints, I would quickly munch as much as my pulsing lips and tongue could endure before rushing to the bathroom to slurp from the sink, like some sort of parched and injured animal. Those psychedelic silhouettes in the chicken-man painting heightened my distress; that sick bastard hung over me while I was at my lowest, mocking me from the walls of the shitter. Whether or not I could finish my food was irrelevant: He had bested me.
I finished the tender and most of the sandwich and called it quits. My self-imposed completionism would fall short, and maybe that's OK. The chicken had already fucked me, why give it any more satisfaction?
I made my way to the nearby Five Guys for an Oreo milkshake. Hours later, hints of the heat still danced around my mouth. The next day, I would face the true penance for my hubris, and the property damage for which I’d made myself legally responsible. I’ll spare you the prolonged and grotesque details. I will tell you, however, that the damn chicken never left my mind for a second as I stared at the tile walls in angry agony.
Moving right along...
Hangry Joe’s | Scoville: 1.5 Million
I won’t lie to you: Dave’s Hot Chicken shook my resolve. Nearly two months after that fateful night and undignified morning, I entered the Inver Grove Heights Hangry Joe’s prepared for another intestinal assault.
I ordered on the iPad kiosk thingy, and selected the “Angry Hot” version the chicken sandwich. It warned me of the waiver, as if I was a rookie or something, and informed me that a server would bring out the document before I travelled down this fiery path. But that never happened. My sandwich arrived with little fanfare; I never signed a waiver, and I quickly figured out why.
While the Dave’s Hot Chicken waiver is meant to prevent the woefully unprepared from turning their sinks into drinking fountains, the Hangry Joe’s one is little more than a PR stunt. For shame. Again, here's Iverson...
The Hangry Joe's "waiver" is more interesting, because, yes it contains all the typical waiver language (the threat of disfigurement is a personal favorite), but what it really does is grant them a license to use photos or video of you for marketing purposes. If I were disfigured eating their sandwich, I would insist that they make that an ad.
I felt some discomfort while I ate the sandwich. Hell, I even drank more water than usual. But that’s about as bad as it got.
While the chicken-man of Dave’s Hot fame loomed in my memory like an angry deity, the gaze of the Hangry Joe’s cartoon mascot rang hollow. A posturing false god—an aura merchant, if you will. Even more laughable after tasting the middling "Angry Hot" heat? The waiver, which I had to find online because they never brought me one, warns of suffering, disfigurement, economic loss, temporary or permanent disability, and paralysis as potential risks. Insulting! I've been to real chicken war, and this ain't it.
As though the hyped-up sandwich wasn't bad enough, the milkshake I washed it down with was simply false advertising. It was advertised as a beautiful vanilla shake, chocolate fudge artfully drizzled around the cup's perimeter. In reality you get a sad, flat chocolate shake. As my friend Tony put it while we sucked them down in disgust, they weren’t shakes at all, just flavored milk.
If you want to test your mettle in the halls of gods and champions, try Dave’s Hot Chicken. (Bonus local-ish angle: Gopher great Kris Humphries, he of brief Kardashian-marrying fame, is a major Dave's investor.) If you want a mediocre sandwich and a faux-challenge? Just know there are no true heroes inside Hangry Joe's.
