I’ve eaten a good deal of Sichuan food (this thread can confirm 
) and some Korean food too. Sichuan spice is more of the numbing kind than “tongue on fire” kind, so I’d put it below Korean but above Singaporean.
Thailand will be up there with Indonesia for sure.
Ah, nice!
I’m guessing the average spice tolerance for the USA is about equal to 5 alarm chili…? I can tolerate 3 alarms. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯
I do remember some of my friends saying that the South is better at spice tolerance than other parts of the US. I haven’t been to that area outside of a day trip for a college capstone project, but I’m curious!
How would you rank the different US regions? I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the Midwest is at the bottom, judging from my friends’ tolerances 
It is highly variable, Utah is in the midwest but it has decent spice tolerance. New Jersey where I live has Indian, Asian, and Central American people but most supermarket spices are fairly mild.
If you go to a fast food restaurant where they advertise spicy food, they will make it crazy spicy to encourage people to try it as a dare.
I’d second what NARB said. I myself haven’t traveled widely so I can’t really speak for other areas with any authority whatsoever. From what I’ve heard, though, I’d guess that the “hottest” state is probably Louisiana because of how spicy cajun cooking is, although Texas has a reputation for spicy food too. Those are my best guesses. (*＾-‘) 乃
i’ll take this trade XD
wow the dedication T_T i can’t imagine it and it’s SO COLD?! i’d just give up and go home AHAHAHAH i can be sad but cozy and opposed to cold lmao
it might go down XD i remember my spice tolerance taking a bit of a hit when i was in boarding, but it was okay a month or so out and back to home-cooked food on the regular XD the spice tolerance is an active boundary to keep to lmao
i hope you find a more practical pot of gold to fund it heh
We are technically in the winter months, but winter on a tropical island means dry chilly air and extra rain more than anything ice cream is still good during the daytime
Hooray for chocolate supremacy o(￣▽￣)ブ
And a banana split sounds really good to try sometime!
I will say that I went to college in the Midwest and currently live in its biggest city, and I’ve yet to hear any of my Midwestern friends mention Utah as part of the Midwest. Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Minnesotta, Missouri, and Kansas, yes, but not Utah.
I asked some of my Midwestern friends just to make sure, and some of the replies were brutal 
In order: a Minnesotan, an Ohioan, a person who’s spent his life moving around Minnesota/Indiana/Michigan (and Tennessee, though he considers it part of the South), and a Michigander.
Ah, New Jersey! One of my friends is from there and he’s Indian-American. He told me about this place in New Jersey that has some of the best Indian food in the country, though I don’t remember the name.
Also, Indian is Asian. It’s part of Asia 
Ooooh, I heard good things about the food in Louisiana! They have a lot of French influence too, don’t they? I’ve yet to make a trip down there but it’s on my list.
And I know a couple people from Texas! One of them is Indonesian-American 
I suppose Texans have a better spice tolerance than others because they share a border with Mexico, don’t they? The campus cafeteria I worked at had a Mexican head chef, and a couple of the salsas we’d serve would pack some heat 
I don’t know if mine has gone up or down. I think it might’ve gone up a tiny bit (since I’ve become more adventurous with my tastes since landing in America), or it’s just American standards making me feel better than I am. All it takes is some authentic sambal to humble me and make me regret everything as I chug down entire jugs of water 
Speaking of spice tolerance, enjoy this convo between my bro and I
If you’re wondering why it looks weird, I was using the desktop version of WhatsApp. It’s more convenient when I’m on my laptop
Literally us:
And I remember seeing this question pop up on Reddit first, but it feels like it’s been ages since places have been offering banana splits. They used to be everywhere growing up but now I feel like restaurants don’t serve them anymore either that or they’re just more of a thing back in Indonesia, but even then, I can’t remember the last time I looked at a menu and saw a banana split in the dessert section. What about you? 
Maybe I should go look for one once the weather gets warmer 
Ah yes, apologies! It is in the rockies so I suppose that it’s part of another area.
Yeah but when Americans talk about Asia they mean East Asia. As in China, Japan, Korea, and the South East Asian countries, India is India or South Asian.
West Asia is the Middle East.
As an Asian who was born and raised in Asia and who is not from East Asia, I still think it’s not nice to deliberately exclude parts of Asia from the Asia definition
Yes maybe in America some people talk about Asia and don’t include the area with 1/3rd of the Asian population, but not in other places.
I grew up in Southeast Asia and attended international schools where many of the teachers were Indian (as well as other nationalities) and they were firmly considered Asian.
One of my English teachers was born and raised in the UK, and he can confirm that over there, not only is India firmly considered part of Asia, but it’s also one of the first countries people think of when you mention Asia.
To mention India, one of the largest countries in Asia, as separate from Asia in the same sentence is not only wrong, but frankly (willfully) ignorant. I don’t understand why people do this aside from ignorance. I’m sick and tired of Americans deciding which countries are Asian or not when many of them have never even left the country, let alone set foot in Asia.
And I say this as a 100%-born-and-raised Asian who doesn’t look like the “typical Asian” that Americans imagine because I don’t have an East Asian face. We’re all Asian. Indians too. Hell, they’re one of the most influential Asian groups, and you can find their influence in my region stretching more than 2000 years ago.
I don’t know about you, but I’d trust a person actually from the continent with what’s considered Asia than a bunch of Americans who are literally oceans apart from the rest of the world.
I agree!
i am dying for good sambal myself T_T no food is too bad to eat with spice hurting my throat lmao
XD i like his confidence AHAHAHAHA and oh ME TOO! i used to prefer the desktop whatsapp but idk what’s up with my version now, it’s so buggy?! like hellooooo what is your problem? [off topic sorry T_T]
am actually going out for chinese tonight (last dinner before i return to my trials of suffering of my degree lmao) so i might pop in with pics if i remember T_T
got such deja vu reading this post and then i remembered this lol very well said Stella! <3
I went Mayonaise White last night:
2 apples, peeled, quartered, sliced thin
2 chicken breasts (rotisserie), sliced thin cross-grain
3 tablespoons both Dijon and Mayo
5 eggs (boiled, diced)
1 small onion, 1 garlic (minced, nuked for a minute to soften the flavor)
My hubby just like mustard a bit too much, so he LOVED this. The apple “resets palate”, Dijon has a mild kick in the first place, and the mayo is for moisture (because egg yolks are the devil).
Semi-related to the topic:
https://nomnomfairies.jollyrose.art/
This is gonna sound so embarrassing, but when one of my non-Indonesian friends asked me how to make sambal, I replied that I didn’t know how 
I grew up avoiding sambal so till now I’m not super familiar, all I know is that my bro would scoop the sambal with whatever meat or rice he’s eating instead of merely dipping 
Another irony is that it was one of my white American friends who had a jar of sambal oelek for making nasi goreng, and his spice tolerance isn’t even great (good for a rural White American, but still horrible compared to me). He gave it and a bunch of other food to me when he was graduating since he needed to clear out his off-campus apartment, and I almost gave it away to one of my Indonesian friends. I ended up using the whole jar when attempting to make rendang from scratch because I didn’t have chilis it turned out… okay, I guess 
Southeast Asian spices are so hard to find
Lol off-topic discussions are perfectly fine over here, you’re good! and admittedly while I do have the desktop WhatsApp app, I almost never use it instead I mainly use WhatsApp Web which does the same thing functionally. It’s more convenient to switch tabs than apps for me.
Ooooh, have fun! And good luck with uni! You got this 
Speaking of Chinese food, while I haven’t cooked or eaten Chinese food lately, the last dinner I cooked looked like a worse version of Chinese takeout when I post it here it’s gonna be such a huge contrast to many of my other pics to date
Thank you! 
gotta stick up for my fellow Asians 
especially my fellow non-East-Asian Asians because the world often forgets about us
Throwback to when my family and I would travel and they’d ask us if where we’re from, and we’d reply Indonesia, and they’d go, “What?”
“It’s a country in Southeast Asia.”
“Huh? Is that close to Japan?”
“No you know Bali?”
“OMG YES, I LOVE BALI 
”
“Bali is in Indonesia… Indonesia is the country and Bali is the island ”
Happened too many times but at least things got a little better in the late 2010s.
Oh you reminded me of a meme map I saw a long while ago, but I can’t find it what I did find, however, is a series of maps from Atlas of Prejudice
Nice! There’s hardly anything better than hearing someone compliment your cooking 
actually no, that’s very fair!!! T_T at the beginning (esp. since i spent two years quite young in the USA) i wasn’t really in touch with my own cultural food, either. i think it’s mostly the outside influence plus, as a kid, there’s so much more interesting things ahahah it’s only when i went to boarding school and was stuck with the food and people there that i started appreciating more. even now, i don’t really cook all the spices stuff i want to because it’s time-consuming and difficult to get here (i’m in a primarily Chinese town now heh and food is good but not near the spice i’d like) but i’m learning! i do try at home.
i think it’s a thing to want to eat everything else more XD perhaps because it’s a house staple, but i’ve learnt to appreciate it more now! but that’s true, they are difficult to find, and even different brands have different flavour profiles T_T not that they’re not good, but you can never know unless you’re a pro (like all the old stall aunties and uncles)
fair, i think i might start doing that because it’s irritating me like nothing else T_T
i am here and already so boreddd T_T i’m actually back early (by a week but still) as i’m in a volunteering programme. classes only start on the 3rd of feb, and it’s hybrid until about the week of the 18th due to CNY, so i have no friends over rn HAHAHAHAH T_T
as long as it tasted good looks do not matter XD also our temple trip ran late and everyone just devoured every dish as it came, so i forgot T_T but it was good! we got this broccoli with taufu skin AND IT WAS SO GOOD PLEASEEE i loved it T_T
SO REALLL i remember people talking about going to Bali but they’re always so suprised to hear it’s in Indonesia like huh??? T_T it happened to me too (but for Malaysia XD) and i’d have to tell them ‘that country next to Singapore’ lmao and even then they were lost, but yeah, now they’re better. now tiktok is all about people telling them not to come here cause they wanna gatekeep XD
i’ve never been to Bali, but i went to Jogja and i loveddd the place, so many temples and structures it was all so cool 
i barely remember the food tho unforch :')
Honestly so real! I remember the first time I tried to make ayam goreng kuning on my own, I was like “I miss my maid already” it took me two hours just to evaporate all the water when simmering the chicken with the seasoning, and I still had to fry it after that 
(For the non-Southeast-Asians in the chat, labor is very affordable where I’m from, so it’s not uncommon for middle-class families to hire maids.)
Ah rip, but also the volunteering program thing sounds cool! 
and man I almost forgot about CNY! I was more aware of it back home because Indonesia has designated CNY as a national public holiday, unlike the US.
To be fair, the US is severely lacking in public holidays, and there are some people who think they should have less public holidays again, one of the things I miss about Indonesia. We get a lot of breaks, partly thanks to religion it also blew my mind when I had to go to classes on Good Friday in America, whereas in my good ol’ Muslim-majority home country I’d get the day off 
I’m actually going to post the picture below pretty soon! It wasn’t bad, but I’ll say that I’ve made better noodles and glad u ate well!
I remember one time in the US my family decided to join a tour group with other Indonesians. We were walking somewhere in California, and then this random white guy overheard us speaking Bahasa and he was like “Welcome Malaysia!”
we were like nooooo, they’re our neighbor (and archrival)
Oooh nice! Coincidentally, my Vietnamese friend’s parents were in Jogja just recently!
About a week or two ago, my friend asked me for tips because his parents were planning to spend two weeks in Indonesia. I wanted to make the most out of it because honestly there aren’t a lot of great guides for tourism in Indonesia beyond Bali (unless they’re in Bahasa maybe, but even then they don’t speak Bahasa), so naturally I was going to type out a lot of stuff.
This is what he sent 
Honestly half the guide was dedicated to Jakarta, even tho it’d only occupy a third of their trip at most. Jakarta isn’t a very touristy city and is more of a place to live in than visit imo. His parents are going to conclude their stay in Bali
Bali is honestly really nice, I hope you get to go there sometime! One of the neat things about Bali (aside from their temples) is that you can book villa-style hotel rooms with private pools for a relatively affordable price! No need to splurge on big-name hotels—my family’s booked small and independent hotels for most of our stays there.
To illustrate, here’s a convo between me and one of my online friends who’s currently in tiny middle-of-nowhere town for a work trip:
