Summer is competitive eating season. Nathan’s Hot Dog challenge always sets the tone in early July with its famous hot dog excess.
We’ve looked at local means of eating excess before. Joseppi’s has a big pizza challenge and there was a disaster involving some blazing hot wings from Tweeters.
Rishi Sushi has a Downtown challenge of its very own. The rewards of finishing the challenge are bragging rights, good luck, and probably a little hair on the chest. It’s called the Good Luck Ramen Challenge: it involves a very hot soup.
The Good Luck Ramen Challenge actually comes with choices. You can choose a broth, and you can (and probably should) also choose some condiments to mix it up with the noodles. For this particular adventure, chicken broth, spinach and shiitake mushrooms seemed like the best combo.
No matter what kind of broth you choose, the soup will arrive alarmingly blood red. That’s promising, and there are pepper slices and some seeds floating around in there too.
At the same time the red hued color hits the eyes, the broth’s hot, burning aroma hits your face. It burns the inside of your nose, even before the first slurp. So, there are some good warnings to approach this challenge with care.
Warnings headed. Starting off with a little spinach leaf and a noodle seemed doable. And it was doable. It was awfully hot, but another bite was not out of the question. It seems like a terrible waste not to continue on.
So then, maybe a little mushroom? But the awful burning effect is cumulative. After the teeny sliver of shiitake was consumed, it just seemed irrational to continue: it hurt. Who does this to themselves?
So, no bragging here. No hair on the chest (probably a good thing) and no good luck. It’d be easier to just find a penny on the street.
You can make your own attempt at Rishi Sushi, 114 N. Third Street.
For more info, visit www.rishiskb.com.
(For a look at the more reasonable items on the menu, CLICK HERE for our main review of Rishi Sushi.)