Spare Ribs

Oh Hell Night, you rocked my world.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending my first Mystery Meet event. This was the 7th event that Mystery Meet organized, and it happened to be at East Coast Grill. If you are not familiar with East Coast Grill, then I should explain that this restaurant hosts an event 2 times a year called Hell Night. What is Hell Night? It’s an excuse for you to burn your mouth, lips, fingers, etc while your man up to a plate of super spicy food.

Mystery Meet provides 5 clues about the restaurant where the event will be occurring so you have a hint of the location when you purchase your tickets, but the big reveal occurs the day before the event. After the first clue “If you can’t take the heat, get your ass outta the kitchen.” I was 90% positive that it was going to be East Coast Grill since it is known for Hell Night and that is the hottest place in the Boston area. It was even featured on Man vs. Food during it’s first season. Hell Night is a major event so it is nearly impossible to get a reservation since they sell out within hours, and this was my big chance to go! In fact, Price and I were driving back form Montreal when the tickets for Mystery Meet were released, which resulted in ridiculous amounts of swearing at the VT mountains that were messing up my 3G connection. Thankfully, AT&T pulled through, and we got tickets.:-)

Prior to attending the event, Price and I met Jacki from Just Add Cheese, her friend Darius, and Amanda from Kitchen Misfit at the neighboring bar, Bukowski Tavern. We shared stories and suggestions of beer, hot sauces, chicken and waffles, pancake places, brunch spots, etc.

The Hell Night menu for the Mystery Meet event did not disappoint. The menu offered several shared appetizers, 2 entrée choices, and dessert. There were bomb ratings after each item warning us of what pain we were going to experience. One thing you can’t prepare for is the Meatball Roulette, the first appetizer. This really is a game of chance, one in which I lost. That spicy meatball provided a deep slow burn that hit the back of my tongue and seemed to last forever. Immediately, my body did not like this sudden jolt and responded with hiccups. Yes, weird.

Next up were the Smokin’ Hot Pork Spare Ribs. These were rated 3 bombs… lie! Our table agreed that this was the hottest thing of the night. However, we did not know this was really miss rated, and were then extremely fearful of the 8 bomb rating that was going to be coming shortly. It was also that this point that we all agreed that no one would wimp out and get milk.

Just when things couldn’t get worse, the Wings of Mass Destruction arrived on our table. Happily, they not 8 bomb hot, even though they had ghost chili oil on them. I managed to eat 3 of them, however the real champ at our table was Frank who ate 5. Frank eat everything quickly and quietly suffered through the pain while the 5 of us made it really clear how much it was killing us. Frank was the champ.

The last shared appetizer was the Korean Fried Chicken Thighs. These were “caliente, not picante” as explained by Darius. I think that I enjoyed these the most because the heat was in the gochujang dipping sauce. Also, the apple kim chee helped cool things off with the contrasting cool crisp fruit.

Price and I got each entrée so we could sample them both. The Latin Spice Grilled Mahi Mahi (2 bombs) was cooked perfectly and provided enough heat without being troublesome. Price’s Jamaican Jerk Grilled Pork Chop (6 bombs) was also manageable because the heat was from a dipping sauce. However, the mashed sweet potatoes still had some kick with some curry so Price had little relief there. There was so much extra of our entrées that he got to relive the heat again today for lunch.

The Mango Berry Crisp dessert was fantastic, but put us over the top on food consumption. Thankfully, the ice cream did help cool things down.

Both Mystery Meet and East Coast Grill did a fantastic time organizing and hosting this event. I really look forward to attending another event, which occurs the second Tuesday of the month.

Thanks for visiting. Please leave me a comment to provide some feedback. I appreciate all the comments I receive.