Apocalypse in my Mouth – Da Bomb

As a student, I’ve learnt the subtle art of studying procrastination. Luckily, there’s plenty of shows out there to binge. Hot Ones is a surprisingly wholesome YouTube show; guests take turns to answer questions in between eating wings drenched in increasingly super spicy sauces. That happens to be commercially available.

There is one sauce that separates the wheat from the chaff, and that is Da Bomb. A small, bulky bottle with a pleasing logo of a nuclear bomb on the front. This stuff is coming at you like thick, dark red blood. Well, after watching guest after guest suffer and gasp their way through it, guess you can say curiosity got the better of me. . .

I like hot food. But in comparison to some people my tolerance level is weak. So this review is more aimed at the average person. If you’re someone who can take a lot of heat this isn’t going to be interesting. But to be fair, spice connoisseurs probably know where this is going.

As pizza is a good comfort food, we’d thought it would be good to use the sauce on top as a drizzle. Unscrewing the bottle and giving it a sniff, the sauce smells. . . dark? Like coal, or the remnants of a wood fire. The stuff is so coagulated it’s actually hard to spread over the face of a pizza so that’s kinda a fail on my part. If you’re gonna try this (“oh, please do!”) I’d recommend cooking them into something smaller. Hot Ones does them into wings. Maybe strips of tofu? You couldn’t use it to dip. It’s just too unpleasant in large dollops. You can’t even think about comparing portion sizes to something like ketchup or mayo. You need to use this so much more sparingly.

Da Bomb is called such because it’s 135,600 scoville count is the amount of radioactive units in one of the bombs used by the U.S. on Japan. 135,600 scoville units coursing through your body. Let’s just ignore what that would do to your blood pressure. We’re probably better off not knowing. . .

So, before we get started let me say if you’re planning on trying this; don’t be a hero – go sparingly with this sauce, guys! – In the first bite you’ve eaten a whole meal’s worth of heat. It’s something you shouldn’t fool around with – eating things too hot for you risks swelling up the airwaves, sinuses and tongue. Not to mention damage to the digestive system and heart and blood pressure. Serious stuff. Don’t try this at home, kids!

Confessions of a Spice Eater

This stuff wastes no time, as soon as it hits the tongue you’re in spice town. I can feel a heat spread through my body like sipping a fine grain whiskey on a cold day. Suddenly my face is flushed. Then something builds that isn’t quite “taste”, and it comes at you like an amyl nitrate high. But. . . hot? Like a kettle boiling inside you. But instead of water boiling it’s magma and snake venom and the saliva of Margaret Thatcher. Rushing from your gut up to your throat till it clings around your head and possesses you like some mystical fire demon that only you can see or believe in. Like, Chilliwise the Dancing Clown. Or something.

Spices hit people differently, the sultan of Scoville, Chilli Klaus, feels it in his ears. For me, I feel it in the head, getting this strange sensation of clarity that I can only really describe as like a methadone high. Presumably that’s the last of the serotonin in my brain eliminating all feeling of happiness as it fries my pre-frontal cortex. From the third bite onward I keep doing that mouth and sound like you’re saying “Ha” in slow motion. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Heat. Rushing through your body. Like an insufferably hot summer’s day when the heat isn’t unpleasant, its nasty and completely impossible to ignore. Only worse. Think of something imaginative, then think of something more dramatic. Heat inside you so intense it becomes painful. You suffer through it like being pushed through a fiery wall. You know it’s happening, you know it’s painful and you silently hope that it’ll end, that you’ll plateau at some point. It’s a physical sensation that is lived through like a realm of existence. It’s as palpable as the state of sleep or the endorphin euphoria of a exercise set.

It took over 2 hours to eat this pizza. This was painful. It took a galleon of milk to get through it. I’m still sweating. Heart is palpitating. My eye balls itch. Skin flushed. My whole body feels like I’m sitting right next to a big bonfire. I’m rocking back and forth. Lips burning. Mouth numb. Really dread to think what my insides look like.

There’s plenty of bloggers and youtubers that dedicate their work to ironically reviewing bad things. I don’t do that, I’m here for good food and good times. But frankly, I honestly don’t know why you’d use this sauce for the taste. It’s like vinegar with a bad attitude. Very sour and bitter, and god help you if you get it caught in your throat. The only situation I can see this being used in is some sort of Frat boy prank or truth or dare game. (Or perhaps if you’re needing youtube hits or blog post views.) It’s novelty, not a quality condiment. There’s just a bland, nasty taste with no depth. I’d be very curious if there was a version with garlic, or garlic & honey, or coriander or mango chutney or something.

However, if you want heat and heat fast this is your stuff. Maybe you could put it in a chilli or ragu? If you have an overwhelming feeling to really punish your guts or torture someone, Da Bomb is ya boi.

“tasting like a tire fire” – John Mayer”

Sadly, a tasteless product is so much harder to review. Where’s the cumin? The basil? The onion? Garlic? Tomato? Taramid? Tahini?! There’s nothing. It simply tastes of this vinegary, acidic, enamel stripping bitterness. This is what I imagine Deep Heat tastes like. The only USP to review is the heat factor. It’s got nothing else to go on. It doesn’t mix well, I had it on pizza, I stirred it into a chilli and it doesn’t simply mix into things. It sticks out with a weird new-plastic taste. Perhaps if you were a really, really good chef you could work this into your dishes; add a bit of brown sugar and red wine and a sprinkle of herbs; this would probably be the beginning of some sort of sauce. . ?

Y’see those black bits? Yeah. That’s enough. A sprinkling of sauce.

Reading through this prior to publishing, I’m reminded of those published diary entrees from writers of the 18th and 19th century when they attempted to document laudanum and cocaine and god knows whatever else they tried to sprinkle on their pizzas. Confessions of a Spice Eater or something like that? You can definitely read through it and trace where the mania starts.

And like cocaine, afterwards you’re left panting on your bed wondering what the ever loving fuck happened. You were happy, you were pure.

To conclude; I ate this because I have a blog about food. But you? You have no excuse. This is nasty stuff. Don’t even. This is the taste equivalent of a dick pic. It don’t even taste good. You want to jazz up your pizza/sandwich/unicycle? Use sriracha instead*. This? This is the sort of shite you eat if you want to wake up a week later in the woods, wearing a hot dog outfit. With no recollection.

Anyway, my day is ruined. I’m off to cry now . . .

* (For the record, Mad Dog 357 is a really decent super spicy hot sauce)

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How hot do you like disappointment? Have you tried Da Bomb? Agree? Disagree? Comment below and let us know!
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