Ben Esplin, 23, from St. George, asked me to find a restaurant with a menu item most people wouldn’t normally order unless they wanted to get sick. Usually these items are for breaking store records to get a free T-shirt or a picture on the wall.
Luckily for Esplin, I’ve had a hankering for something spicy as of lately.
I grabbed a table with three friends Saturday afternoon at Wing Nutz. There they offer the option to turn any of the 18 sauce choices into “Purgatory,” — a term that means you will get the ultimate spicy treatment.
It took some negotiating, but after a discussion with the waitress, we eventually came to an understanding as to which would be the hottest of the hot wings. She suggested I order the Southern Hotties in Purgatory.
I encouraged her to tell the cook to drench the wings and get sadistic about it. I wanted the wings so hot I would be inflicting self-harm and regretting every bite.
I ordered 10 of those hotties and five apricot teriyaki wings for dessert.
As she set the plate on the table, she said customers who try Purgatory say the hotness just sneaks up on you.
The hot-hot-hot sauce had a distinctive cutting smell about it. The spice was pungent and melted my face with its fumes like a gust of pepper spray.
I set my water to the side in case the worst should happen and helped myself to a teriyaki wing first, which I knew might be the last thing I would enjoy over the next two days.
After one breath, I attacked the wings from hell. I thought the spice was taking a forward advance because I tasted the fire immediately. However, several seconds later I felt an awful sting of incarcerating flames a thousand times worse enveloping my mouth.
I threw down a second wing, and I could feel the same heat continuing down my throat. I didn’t use ranch or water until after the third wing because I wanted to feel the full heat.
I felt like a wuss after the other three guys with me each grabbed a wing. Neither of them seemed to be sweating or tearing up as I had been. However, they did drench their wings in ranch and wiped some of the hot sauce off.
I ate a total of six Purgatory wings myself. I struggled getting the last one down, but I fought through it and finished eating the wing. Even after I had washed my hands, I rubbed my eyes and caused some temporary blindness to add to my suffering.
Although I was feeling proud of myself for eating lava, there were no streamers or a round of applause. The waitress seemed clueless about the Purgatory challenge advertised in huge letters across the entire wall by the bathroom, and apparently the number of wings I’d eaten was less than the amount I was supposed to consume in order to be a big winner. The only prize I took home was heart burn.
Want more life endangering challenges? Send your requests to www.facebook.com/requestrobby.
