24-05-2025
I tasted the hottest fried chicken in London that's so spicy I had to sign a legal waiver - and it took 24 hours for the pain to fully subside
If you want to impress your mates with your high tolerance for spice, a new restaurant chain in the UK has a fresh challenge for you.
Dave's Hot Chicken, which specialises in Nashville-style burgers and strips, has just opened its first UK branch in Shaftesbury Avenue in central London.
The chain, which first opened in Los Angeles in 2017, now boasts over 200 restaurants across the US and counts Drake, Usher and Samuel L. Jackson among its celebrity fans.
Famously, it offers a notoriously spicy 'Reaper' burger, covered in red-hot batter, said to reduce even the most hardened of chilli lovers to tears.
Although the batter recipe is a closely-guarded secret, the key ingredient is powdered Carolina Reaper, the second-hottest chilli pepper in the world.
Carolina Reaper registers a whopping 1.6 million on the Scoville scale, the internationally-accepted system used to measure the heat of chillis.
So it's little surprise that customers can only order the Reaper if they are 18 or over and sign a legal waiver.
MailOnline's Assistant Science Editor, Jonathan Chadwick, went along to try the Reaper for lunch - unaware he was about to experience 24 hours of pain.
Dave's Hot Chicken, originally founded in a card park in East Hollywood, offers seven spice levels – Plain, Lite Mild, Mild, Medium, Hot, Extra Hot and Reaper.
Before my Reaper is prepared, I have to sign the lengthy waiver, which ensures I can't bring legal action forward against Dave's if something goes wrong.
It reads: 'Due to its extremely spicy nature, eating Dave's Hot Chicken REAPER is an extreme test of a person's physical and mental limits.
'Before ordering the REAPER, you should ensure that you have sufficient experience in eating very spicy food and understand and are able to accept the associated risks.'
According to the waiver, Reaper can cause 'sweating, indigestion, shortness of breath, allergic reactions, vomiting and diarrhoea', but in extreme cases, it can even lead to 'chest pain, heart palpitations, heart attack and stroke'.
If I was nervous before, after meticulously reading the entire waiver, I'm now really quite scared. Is it possible a portion of fried chicken could do me irreparable damage?
The single Reaper chicken tender, costing £3.99, arrives on a slice of white bread with pickles and secret sauce, which is apparently true to Nashville tradition.
It's certainly an angry-looking piece of food – a hellish red colour, curled upwards like the devil's toenail.
The lengthy legal waiver: I initially thought the waiver was some kind of PR stunt, but it actually has a very serious purpose.
Why does chilli hurt?
The chemical in a chilli pepper that causes the burning sensation in your mouth is called capsaicin.
It binds to a receptor in your mouth and on your tongue called TRPV1 - the same receptor that tells you when something on your skin is too hot.
Capsaicin is a hydrophobic (water-repelling) molecule, so if you reach for a glass of ice-cold water, you're not going to wash any capsaicin away.
In fact, you'll end up distributing it around your mouth, making the pain even worse.
A better option is milk, which contains a protein called casein, which can break down capsaicin.
Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
To line my stomach first, I eat the mild chicken burger with chips, served with special sauce and pickles (all delicious), before turning my attention to the Reaper.
I've read milk is good to quell spicy heat in the mouth because it contains a protein called casein, which can break down capsaicin, the compound in chilli that makes your mouth hurt.
So I make sure I have a large vanilla milkshake handy, as well as a Sprite with plenty of ice.
Staff also supply Reaper customers with protective gloves and little plastic pots of honey, which are supposed to quell the heat (they don't).
For the first seven seconds after taking a big bite, it feels like the hype around the Reaper has been exaggerated – but the intense burn suddenly takes off like a bullet.
As Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire' starts playing on the loudspeakers, the heat-sensitive pain receptors in my mouth are triggered – and I soon turn into a total, sticky mess.
Sweat flows from every pore of my face and snot dribbles from my nose, and I can't wipe the tears from my eyes because I don't want to touch them with my messy gloved hands.
Struggling somewhat with my coordination, I slosh milkshake over my trousers and the floor. Reaper is ludicrously, idiotically hot. And it's caught me off-guard.
You know when food pretends to be really hot, using words like 'fiery' and 'flamin' on the packaging? And then you eat it and it's hardly hot at all?
Well, the Reaper experience at Dave's is nothing like that.
Until now, the hottest thing I've ever eaten is a Vindaloo, but the Reaper fried chicken easily takes the cake. I just can't do another bite.
It takes about 40 minutes for the worst of the pain to go away, but even then I'm not out of the woods yet.
Reaper is a 24-hour experiment on your body. As it travels, it inflicts different types of pain – burning numbness in the mouth, aching stomach, and, perhaps worst of all, the morning-after sensation of a red hot poker in the worst place imaginable.
Still, it feels very wasteful to just have one bite, so I take the rest of the Reaper back to the MailOnline office and cut it into small portions.
A few brave souls give it a try, including my fellow science reporter Wil Hunter, who shortly has to have a lie down after suffering 'sudden stomach ache and cold sweats'.
Fortunately no-one has a stroke or a heart attack, but as Dave's plans to roll out more restaurants around the UK this year, could it be a matter of time before a nasty health incident?
According to a spokesperson for Dave's, there have not been any cases of people dying since it opened in the US eight years ago.
Nevertheless, my advice, even for chili fans, is this: do not underestimate the heat of the Reaper.
What is the Carolina Reaper?
The Carolina Reaper is an extra-hot chilli pepper developed by American breeder Ed Currie between around 2001 and 2012.
Carolina Reaper registers 1.6 million on the Scoville scale, the internationally-accepted system used to measure the heat of chillis.
Between 2013 and 2023, Carolina Reaper was certified the world's hottest chili pepper, according to Guinness World Records.
But it was surpassed by the dreaded Pepper X, which was also developed by Currie - putting the Reaper in second place.
Pepper X registers a whopping 2.6 million on the Scoville scale.
The Scoville scale is based on the concentration of capsaicin, which is an active component of chilli peppers and causes a burning sensation when it makes contact with human tissue.
Currie said in an interview with the Associated Press when he first tried Pepper X, it did more than warm his heart.
'I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours. Then the cramps came,' said Currie. 'Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.'
