If I’m thinking of the same place as you, that was some serious pepper inflation on the menu.
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Never expected to get a durian shake in Jakarta with chilies in it.
That’s why I wanted to get a groupthink going about the spiciest overall cuisines. Not every dish has to beget a proverbial mushroom cloud in one’s ears.
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Your durian shake = my buttermilk experience in nyc.
Once when my mouth was burning (from the black pepper and green chillies in one dish) at a Chettinad restaurant in nyc, I ordered buttermilk to quell it (as suggested by the server, I originally asked for yogurt) — it arrived shortly, with chopped green chillies floating on top 
My standard indian buttermilk expectation is lightly salted, maybe even a bit of cumin or black salt. In some places, they add tempering. Apparently at this place, also green chillies. And yet I did think the server should have had the sense to tell the kitchen to leave that out if it was standard, given the reason for the order 
.
But, re cuisines vs dishes: I still don’t understand painting any cuisine as “spiciest” based on a few dishes or ingredients.
For example, most Indian food is NOT spicy. There are condiments and sauces that accompany every meal to adjust the spice level if desired: chutneys, pickles, thechas — the words change from region to region. Of course there are also certain dishes that are cooked to be spicy, everyone has heard of some of them (vindaloo!) if not others (Naga pork!)
Yet a generalization to an entire cuisine seems limited / limiting in thought (similarly for Thai food where there’s so much more going in terms of flavor balancing and range than “spicy!”)
I often use (very spicy) Calabrian chile paste in place of Indian chilli-garlic chutney when I don’t have the latter (which is most of the time) — yet the existence and application of Calabrian chiles in some dishes doesn’t generalize Italian cuisine as “spicy”, so why the generalization from ingredient or dish to the entire cuisine for other (mostly eastern) cuisines?
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This issue showed up on my Twitter feed, although I forget who the poster was. In that case, it was related to Indian food. Respondents were of mixed feelings because, especially for those unfamiliar, what it spicy for one person is not necessarily to another (putting aside how “spicy” vs “spiced” an item is). So, this is the jpeg of what was circulated:
This was the restaurant:
http://biryanicitymd.com/menu.html
I have a friend who can barely handle anything more complex in terms of what he perceives as heat than a dusting of black pepper. I would imagine even if something was honestly “mild” in a given cuisine’s spicing, he’d still find it too hot. I am also remembering a trip a few years ago to Lotus of Siam to have the fabled Khao Soi. Three of us at the table each had 3 different “heat” requests on their scale of 0-10. I’m sure my friend who got it at level 0 probably wasn’t getting it at the level at which the dish is supposed to be served, but I’m glad she was able to try it in a way that was comfortable for her, which increases her overall comfort level in trying new dishes from new to her cuisines.
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Aren’t you generalizing about everyone having heard of vindaloo?
Also, I’d travel to India again, look for, and find spicy dishes. I’m not traveling to the Outer Hebrides or Yakutsk thinking “today’s the day they’re finally going to have bhut jolokia.”
The generalization serves to inspire me – and perhaps others – to learn about new dishes from cuisines best known for having spicy food. As had been mentioned above, both in my reply and in others, I wouldn’t presume to go on a habanero hot sauce tour of Moscow, neither the Russian nor the Idahoan version.
Obviously, my durian comment was lost on you … but I am curious about this Nagaland pork (with bamboo shoots).
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I used to despise spicy foods, but my ex slowly turned me onto it over the years, and I am so grateful that she did 
If only I could return to Thailand and enjoy more of the foods I couldn’t back then (including heaps of cilantro, which I also used to hate).
I couldn’t eat buffalo wings back then at a level of heat that wouldn’t even register with me today.
I mentioned the hottest dish I ever ordered was a lamb jalfrezi from our local, mediocre-but-serviceable Indian place further upthread.
I also went to Zaab Elee with a bunch of Chinese friends (one of them a chile head just for bragging rights/machismo), and we got a few different laabs. The heat levels were all over the place, with a duck laab at 4 being twice as hot as a different one at 5 
I specifically visit Sichuan and Thai places for the heat/spicy dishes, and appreciate the condiment trays available in traditional Thai places from which I can add chili sauce, dried chilies, chilies in fish sauce, or chilies in vinegar to whatever I order, hot or not 
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No, because when indian and spicy come up, vindaloo is never not mentioned (including on this thread)
That’s great, and I think I understood your original question — to find the spiciest dishes that might inspire you to travel to places.
But my comments have been to the end that generalizations usually do a great disservice to what is being generalized. Coming from a culture that is at the receiving end of many of them. I’ll leave this at “curry”.
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Spiciest (hot that is) would be authentic Americanized Chinese Garlic Chicken. First time I ever had it-- nose running & eye watering. Let’s see-- would’ve been 1976 in NYC but midtown. Wasn’t asked about spice level. It was an epiphany! It became one of my standard orders. Anyplace that does ask I’ll do medium or mild. While I’ve had spicy Tex-Mex, the Chinese wins for personal spiciest.
Uh-oh. 
Questions like this, to me, always seem a little blunt.
There’s spicy where you’re just looking for pain, for the sake of pain. Like eating just a Carolina reaper pepper, or since we’re talking “cuisine” perhaps a hotdog garnished with a Carolina reaper pepper.
Then there’s spicy where it is part of the quiddity of the dish itself. Like, for example, Sichuan water boiled fish, or Laal maans, where the dish is spicy (but not comic book spicy) and still very very tasty.
What are we asking for here?
Seems like alot of people are just talking about the former category (spicy for the sake of spicy), which, to me, seems antithetical to the whole point of eating spicy foods (or cuisines).
I am more curious about spicy foods, or even the spiciest foods, that you actually enjoy versus those that are just spicy for the sake of hurting your tastebuds.
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Uh, no thanks. I don’t eat spicy food for the pain. I eat it where it is appropriate, and an essential component of the dish.
Blunt?
I gave it a wiiiiide berth. Whatever comes to any person’s mind vis-a-vis the words “spicy” and “cuisine.”
It’s presumptuous to think I asked the question as if I wanted to go directly to the ER without passing GO.
Alliums, chilies, wasabi/horseradish, vinegar … I’m curious to see how we all interpret those two words.
I’ve had some pretttty hot horseradish/wasabi, and have been surprised by the bite of a recent radish.
I love the different kinds of heat one gets from Thai vs. Mexican vs. Indian vs. X. I find that Thai and Mexican heat is often in-your-face, whereas some of the spicier Indian dishes I’ve had tend to sneak up on you, sort of accumulative.
But from right next door, a Hungarian goulasch can hit all those piquant notes, and then some. At least, the one from the Hungarian family I knew, did.
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True, though I’ve never had a goulash that was too spicy for me to eat. There are some nice Syrian and Turkish condiments that pack a serious punch 
My local Syrian restaurant always serves two chilli sauces with meals. One is quite punchy and is a sort of pouring consistency. The other seems to be little more than finely chopped red chilli with a little oil and is very fiery. I suspect both, or at least the latter, are house made as I’ve not seen anything like the chopped chilli one in the Middle Eastern shops.
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If it’s any comfort, @Saregama I think I get what you’re saying. The assumption that certain cuisines are by default “spicy” (a complicated term anyway as the ranges of spices becomes subsumed by “heat”) is a problem. People would, it seems, be surprised to know that there are people on the subcontinent who do not care for “spicy” and are well served by the number of “non-spicy” (not bland, but not high heat) foods available.
As such, the demand for adding spice becomes a request for an experience that might not honour the prep. as such it is the equivalent of taking a bottle of hot sauce to food and yet declaring you’ve kept it true to the chef’s intention. (Or something, now I’m sloppy and also not beyond adding any number of spices to a food to make it something I enjoy.)
I could be wrong, but that’s the feeling I get as chiles also become a means of ascribing value to something although what sort of value (beyond heat) I’m not sure.
Nobody anywhere in this thread made the claim that each and every dish in the cuisines mentioned IS spicy or should be prepared spicy just bc it’s from country X.
One of our dear friends, an Indian married to a Lebanese woman, has a very low tolerance for heat. I swear he sweats when he eats bell peppers
We’d never expect him (or anyone, really) to make a spicy byriani or any other dish from his home when it isn’t supposed to be served or eaten that way.
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The one I remember has a distinct citrus (orange zest?) flavor to it, much heat, some garlic & a bunch of herbs. Really crave-worthy. It’s been too long since I’ve last had it to try and reverse engineer.
If we make it to Berlin this year, I’ll have to stop in at Yarok again 
