DUBAI // The warning signs are there. First, if you can eat the Qube Inferno Burger, packed full of the world’s hottest chillies, in 30 minutes you don’t have to pay the Dh60 price.
Second is the legal waiver you must sign before taking on the task.
Third, and perhaps most telling, is that the man who created the thing won’t go near it.
“It’s too hot for me,” says Sunil Anandan, chef at Qube Sports Bar. “I have tasted it but I can’t finish it.”
Sunil spent a month finding chillies from all over the planet and perfecting the recipe for the burger in his kitchens at The Track golf course, Meydan.
Putting the heat on customers are UAE chillies, chopped bird’s eye chillies from India and Sri Lanka, flaked cayenne pepper and chocolate habanero chillies, which are twice as spicy as a regular habanero and rate 400,000 on the Scoville scale of heat.
As if that’s not enough, the burger is topped with lava sauce, a Sambal-style mix of a red-hot selection of chillies from across South-East Asia, and even the toasted sesame seed-bun has an infusion of scotch bonnet chilli oil and chilli seeds.
Only two of the 20 people who have tested the burger could complete the challenge.
James Norris ate half before he lost the stomach for the task.
“I gave it my best shot,” says James, 39. “It’s the hottest thing I have eaten by a mile. I like Indian food – I quite like anything that’s spicy – but this takes it to a whole new level. Everything about it was red hot.”
His daughter, aged 11, managed two mouthfuls.
James says he made sure he was hungry before the challenge but it didn’t help. “The first bite you took was lovely, and then within seconds your mouth just started to be overpowered with extreme heat and from there on it just became a challenge.”
Sunil was on hand to rub salt into the stomach wounds of those who couldn’t match it with his creation.
“There are customers who like to ask for more of a spicy kick in their meals,” Sunil says.
“Now we have the Qube Inferno Burger, so we will see who is really up to the challenge.
“They have the chance to be put up on the Wall of Flame but those who don’t manage it will forever be on my personal Wall of Shame.”
ecleland@thenational.ae
