Jackson Monge

The Chili Prawns were spicy — a persisting inferno on the delicate tongue. Nonetheless, they were gigantic, tender, and very good.

Red Hot Chili Pepper is a restaurant in San Carlos where one can explore just how spicy food can possibly be. It’s a place to explore and test your own pain threshold.

Red Hot Chili Pepper isn’t the famous American rock band, but rather an Asian fusion restaurant that loves to serve spicy food. The Devil’s Chicken earned its notoriety by making patrons faint from eating it. Thankfully, nothing else is as spicy as the Devil’s Chicken.

To drink I had an Arnold Palmer, which is lemonade mixed with tea. Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Arnold Palmer is more tea than lemonade, which is an abnormality as most restaurants serve a mostly-lemonade Arnold Palmer. In addition to that, it seemed as though the tea was a more herbal or fruity tea, rather than the more traditional black tea. I wasn’t disappointed; it was quite good.

Onto the food: if I had to describe it, it was spicy. It was good too, but really pay attention to the number of chili peppers next to the name of the dishes, as it tells you how spicy they are. I probably should have paid more attention to them, but luckily I didn’t end up getting anything too spicy.

I ate the Firecracker Chicken and Chili Prawns for appetizers. For the meal, I ate the Five Spice Beef Short Ribs. I also had rice that came in a cool pail container, and it helped sop up some of the sauces and juices from the appetizers and meal.

The appetizers were good, but I couldn’t eat too many of the prawns. They were too spicy for me — really good, but too spicy. The best way to describe them would be, almost like spicy orange chicken, except that it’s shrimp. They are also pretty big for shrimp, so I definitely got my fill. The Firecracker Chicken was far easier to eat, it was more tangy than spicy. The Firecracker Chicken was almost like chicken calamari if that makes any sense.

The Firecracker Chicken was far easier to eat; it was more tangy than spicy. The Firecracker Chicken was almost like chicken calamari if that makes any sense. It was a thin crisp, covering a soft meaty inside.

The short ribs were good. They were almost like very tender chunks of stew meat. There wasn’t a knife at the place setting, but that just shows how tender they were. They were drenched in a sweet sauce, and funnily enough, they did have some spice to them. It sounds odd, but when there’s an item on the menu that can make people faint with how spicy it is, nothing surprised me. Overall it was good and goes great with the rice, since the rice sops up all the sauce.

Overall, Red Hot Chili Pepper’s food was really good and quite spicy. If you like a lot of heat and spiciness, take your mouth and wallet here. Do be wary of the Devil’s Chicken — the restaurant’s had to call ambulances due to customers fainting from the meal. Just remember to stay careful of what you get, but no matter what you choose, you’ll probably enjoy it.