Jarrett House North

There’s been something of a revolt on the Arlington list recently about the poor quality of service and availability of goods at the Arlington Stop ’n’ Shop, the bigger of the two full service grocery stores in town and the only one open after 9 pm. The frustrations range from inexplicably poor product selection to inexplicable unavailability of stock items (parsley, skim milk in anything smaller than gallon containers, shredded wheat cereal)—and those are just my stories; there were somewhere north of 30 individuals complaining on the list. My contention has long been that if Stop ’n’ Shop had to contend with competition like the grocery stores that we had back in the South, or in Seattle, or pretty much anywhere we have lived, they’d fold like yesterday’s news.

When I heard that Hannaford had opened a store in (relatively) nearby Waltham, I was ecstatic. The Hannafords that I had visited in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee were large, well-lit, well stocked stores that ran the product gamut from organic produce to cornflakes. I had high hopes that this would be our new store of choice.

Sadly, my hopes were dashed. Hannaford had taken over an existing store, and the corporate dark color paint and wood, so well suited for large open buildings, made the small interior space seem cramped and low. The meat counters looked good, but there was no tuna at the fish counter, and the produce, while plentiful, left something to be desired in freshness and eye appeal. The rest of the store just felt cramped and low, and the checkout staff were too busy with their own conversations to actually make eye contact with us.

Ironically, I may have found an answer in the other Arlington store, Foodmaster aka Johnny’s, which though smaller and less convenient seems friendlier and better stocked. But I’ll have to continue to hope that a real grocery chain will come along and beat the stuffing out of Stop ’n’ Shop, because it appears on first glance that Hannaford won’t be the one to do it.

It was a cold and rainy night in Somerville, but inside the East Coast Grill it was hot as hell. Hell Night was underway. Eight of us were there to brave the heat of the most amazing hot cuisine in the world. Cuisine where dishes with habañeros are mild by comparison, and heat is expressed in Bombs. Cuisine where appetizers have names like “Weapons of Ass Destruction,” accompanied by drinks like The Cold Fusion Martini and The Hurler From Hell. And then there was the Pasta From Hell: the raison d’être and original dish of Hell Night, a dish so vilely full of peppers that it was reputed to cause uncontrollable vomiting, or worse, in those who were at the same table where it was consumed.

The eight of us—Charlie, Niall, Tennessee Lee, Greg, Bill, Julian, Andrew, and me—crowded around the bar, blue ribbon winning beverages in hand, waiting for our table. We compared preparatory strategies: several of us had premedicated with Pepcid, others grasped eagerly as rolls of Rolaids were passed. Around us there was an excited buzz. A server walked past in red hospital scrubs and a face mask. There was a stocky black man with an LCD belt buckle flashing the word “HOT” and a sweatshirt embroidered with red peppers.

We finally got a seat, in a room lit by dim red light bulbs, and ordered a round of appetizers. One Hurler, one martini, both five bombs; a plate of thermonuclear hot wings (six bombs, described on the menu as “Weapons of Ass Destruction”), a plate of Hell Fries, an order of littleneck clams with habañero peppers, four bombs apiece. And an order of Pasta From Hell, one of only two items on the menu with an eight bomb rating

Others around the table had been working on Tennessee Lee all week. “You have to order it, Lee. The honor of the State of Tennessee is at stake.” It was agreed that he would eat it and that we would all get a taste; Andrew refused Lee’s generous offer of a 60-40 split.

That settled, Lee shot the Hurler (a raw oyster floating in homemade pepper vodka) and blinked. “That’s pretty hot,” he said. I tasted the martini, and unbidden a description from the 2004 Hell Night floated through my mind: “Julian drank the martini and got very quiet for the rest of the night…” It was in fact the nastiest beverage I had ever drunk, far worse than the Hurler. I carefully replaced the martini on the table, ate a few littlenecks and some Hell Fries, and nibbled a jalapeno pickled with habañeros and Scotch Bonnets—probably the least hot food I ate all night.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noted Andrew returning the second hot wing he had taken uneaten to the common plate. A wing bone sat on his plate, and sweat was starting from his sideburns and under his eyes. He reached for the ketchup, poured about a cup of it on his plate, and started eating it with a spoon. I’m not normally a ketchup man, but I took the bottle and put a little on my plate as well. It was the only food on the table that had no hot peppers.

The LED belt buckle man, now identified as Doctor Pepper (backstory in an article in the Patriot Ledger)*, approached the table, waiver form in hand. Lee signed the waiver after much blustering from both sides, and the Pasta arrived. Lee took a big forkful, twirled it, and forked it into his mouth. Doctor Pepper said, “Oh, man! Ain’t seen nobody take a big first bite like that!” Lee took another bite. He said, “Where I come from…” and paused, then downed his water in a gulp. As Doctor Pepper cackled behind him, he gasped for breath and said “You know, I can see how people would vomit from this.”

The plate went around the table. Each of us took a piece of the pasta. I consumed a noodle about two inches long and started frantically eating ice. It was without a doubt the hottest food that had ever been in my mouth. I wasn’t brave enough to eat the sausage. For that matter, no one was. Shortly there was no pasta left on the plate, mostly due to Lee’s valiant efforts, but much of the sausage remained untouched.

Entrées arrived, to our collective relief. I passed a dish of cole slaw—with no peppers—over to Tennessee Lee. “You might want some of this,” I said. He took several forkfuls in gratitude. My Korean spicy noodles with shrimp and scallops (rating: 4 bombs) were a mild, refreshing, civilized delight to my brutalized palate. I can only imagine how Lee felt about his five-bomb skirt steak.

A feeling of dreamy satisfaction settled over me as the endorphins kicked in. By the end of the night, one thing was clear: Hell Night would always be a stag event for us because none of our wives or girlfriends would ever be so stupid as to bring this on themselves.

* Update 2022-06-16: That Patriot Ledger article goes to a dead link. There is a more recent interview with Doctor Pepper in the Boston Globe from 2017.