Horse 2924 - 0 Out Of *****

In several Bahn Mi shops, Thai food shops, and even the odd Kebab shop, there are signs that jokingly have the following rating of heat:

*** - Very Hot

** - Hot

* - Medium

0 - White People

Now while that might be true for some white people, whose idea of cuisine is to boil a carrot for three and a half months until all the colour has escaped and then still complain about it being too spicy, I am a heat seeker. I am not truly happy unless the level of heat is apoplectic, and until the level of heat drives me into a state of anaphylactic shock where I am keeled over on the floor and I'm simultaneously bleeding out of my eyeballs, nose and ears at the same time.

To that end: Sriracha is okay; Kebab sauce is okay; Tabasco sauce is good; Frank's Red Hot sauce is quite lovely; but the undisputed queen of all of the hot sauces is Samyang Hot Chicken Flavor Ramen Sauce. It has an SHU rating of 8706. The 2X Haek Spicy Buldak Hot Chicken Flavor sauce has an SHU rating of 10,001 and the 3X Haek Spicy Buldak Hot Chicken Flavor sauce has an SHU rating of 13,013. All hail the Empress Hochi.

I found Samyang Hot Chicken Flavor instant ramen in the shops one day and then have been wondering what that combination of flavours, spice, and heat is ever since. The list of ingredients of the packet may as well have been written in an ancient and long forgotten script because it's a list of E numbers and things which otherwise look incredibly normal but remain unfathomable. The Samyang company is obviously performing a wild act of transformation because they take ingredients which I understand (so they say) and turn them into the taste of thousands of angels dancing on the head of a pin, except with knives.

Samyang Hot Chicken Flavor instant ramen would have been enough except someone mentioned that you could buy the sauce at Woolworths and that completely changed my expectations. It was as if someone had invented a way to hack the system because no longer could I get a small rationed packet of sauce and only with a bowl of instant ramen but I could get more than was rationally sensible. Those people who tell you that you can have too much of a good thing are lying to you. If you have too much of a good thing, you can save the rest for later. Ha!

Having learned that I could get Samyang Hot Chicken Flavor instant ramen at Woolworths, I found it at my local supermarket in Blacktown and thus, I was a happy shopper indeed. What the kosmos failed to inform me of though, was that having obtained Samyang Hot Chicken Flavor instant ramen, it turns out you only get to do it once. Oh no. I have gone from the Crown Prince Jocularity, to being just some joker who has had a cruel trick played on me. The joke's on me and I am a fool.

My local Woolworths in Blacktown is the only place that I have found Samyang Hot Chicken Flavor Sauce in the little black bottle and I suspect that that is because we do live in a very multicultural area. Even then, I have only ever found it once and there is now a sticker on the shelf where it was where this Woolworths says that it is temporarily out of stock. As that sticker has been there longer than it was actually in stock and on the shelf, I am suspicious of the truthiness of this sticker. Telling me that something is out of stock, is like placing a false hope into the world and if they don't bother to put it back in stock, then my hope will have been misplaced.

Elsewhere in my corner of the world, Tong Li Supermarket in Blacktown doesn't carry it; Asian Food Market Blacktown doesn't have it; G&L Supermarket in Blacktown doesn't have it either. I have been to multiple Indian supermarkets across Blacktown, Quakers Hill, Schofields, Kings Langley and Seven Hills, hoping that they might cater for Korean customers on the off chance but no. I appear to be living in a semi arid wasteland of spicy food. 

I am not helped in my quest to find Samyang Hot Chicken Flavor Sauce either at the Asian supermarket at the south end of the Town Hall Station pedestrian concourse, or at the city branch of Woolworths and the entire of the lower North Shore from Mosman to North Sydney; which includes Cremorne, Neutral Bay, and Kirribilli and Milson's Point is a complete write-off.

It looks like I may have to accept the gentle ribbing of Bahn Mi shops, Thai food shops, and even the odd Kebab shop when they have their hotness rating of 0 for White People. But nay nay nay, I doth protest. I am a genetic anomaly, who somehow remembers my unknown ancestors attempts to sail around the world for spices. That is, unless I am able to use the tools of sleuthery and hunt down this as yet unattainable source of flavour, spice, and heat. I don't want to live in a world of 0 but of *****.