MENU GUIDES • 5 min read
How Spicy Is It?
One item carries a warning, a few are warm, and almost everything else is exactly as hot as you ask for.
Very little on this menu has heat built in. The Tiger Steak — ribeye with jalapenos and a blackened beer sauce — is the only item with a warning on it. Buffalo shrimp is properly warm; the buttermilk buffalo chicken uses mild sauce. Everything else is a choice you make with the sauce cups.
Heat on this menu is almost always a choice rather than a default. Very little arrives hot unless you asked for it, and the things that do are labelled. The trouble is that the labelling is spread across five different sections, so there is no single place that tells you what is going to bite.
This is that place.
The one that actually is hot
The Tiger Steak. Jalapenos and a blackened beer sauce on freshly sliced ribeye, and the menu itself warns you: it will bite your tongue. That is not marketing, it is a description.
It is the only item on the menu that carries a warning, and it is worth taking seriously if you are ordering for someone else. Nothing else in the Philly section comes close to it.
Where the peppers are
Jalapenos appear more often than people notice, and in three of the four places they are optional or mild in context:
| Item | What is in it | How hot |
|---|---|---|
| Tiger Steak | Jalapenos and blackened beer sauce | The hot one |
| Pepper Steak Philly | Your choice of green pepper, banana pepper or jalapenos | You decide — green is mild, jalapeno is not |
| The Garden | Jalapenos, green peppers, banana peppers, mushrooms | Warm rather than hot |
| Veggie Philly | The same peppers, no meat | Warm rather than hot |
| Loaded Fries | Jalapeno, bacon, cheese | Mild — cheese blunts it |
The three pepper options are a real spread. Chilli heat is measured on the Scoville scale, devised by the pharmacist Wilbur Scoville in the early 1900s to quantify how much capsaicin a pepper carries — and a jalapeno sits a long way up it from a sweet green pepper, which carries essentially none.
The Pepper Steak is the one to pay attention to, because the pepper is a choice and the three options are genuinely different. Green pepper is sweet and not hot at all. Banana pepper is tangy and barely warm. Jalapeno is the one that makes it a spicy sandwich.
Buffalo, and how hot it actually is
Two buffalo items, and they sit at opposite ends:
- Buffalo Shrimp — half a pound, tossed in buffalo sauce. Properly warm, and the sauce is on the outside so you meet it immediately
- Buttermilk Buffalo Chicken — made with buffalo mild sauce, with ranch. The gentlest buffalo thing we do
- Wings — whatever you choose, which is the whole point
The buttermilk buffalo chicken catches people out in the other direction: they order it expecting heat and it is a mild, ranch-dressed sandwich. If heat is what you want, that is not the order. We have gone through both in buffalo beyond wings.
The sauce cups, which are the real control
Heat here is mostly additive rather than built in, and the sides menu is where you add it. Ranged roughly from mildest to fiercest:
- Ranch and Blue Cheese — not heat at all; these are what you use to take heat away
- Honey BBQ — sweet, no heat
- Garlic Sauce — depth, no heat
- Mild Sauce — warmth, not heat
- Honey Hot and Honey Hot Lemon Pepper — heat with sugar and citrus behind it, which softens the edge
- Hot Sauce — the straightforward one
This is genuinely useful for a mixed table. Order the food at a heat everyone can eat and put the cups in the middle, rather than ordering one thing hot and one thing plain and hoping it splits evenly.
The seafood boil is its own system
The boil does not work like the rest of the menu. You choose a seasoning and you choose a spice level, and they are two separate decisions — so you can have a flavour you like at a heat you can handle rather than being forced to pick between them.
Two things worth knowing. Seasoning coats everything in a shared bag, so there is no picking around it once it arrives; order the heat for the least heat-tolerant person at the table. And a boil keeps working in the bag on the way home, so it lands hotter at your table than it did in the kitchen. Our guide to how the boil works covers the ordering.
Ordering for someone whose tolerance you do not know? Go one level below what you would pick and add a cup of hot sauce on the side. Adding heat at the table is easy. Taking it out is impossible.
What has no heat in it at all
Worth knowing if you are avoiding it rather than chasing it. Nothing in these carries any heat unless you add it:
- Every Philly except the Tiger Steak, and the Pepper Steak if you pick jalapenos
- All four burgers — the Smokehouse has BBQ sauce and honey mustard, neither of which is hot
- The wraps, which are built with a cool cucumber sauce
- Both salads, and the grilled chicken versions on the special menus
- Fries, rings, mozzarella sticks, gyoza, corn nuggets and the rest of the appetizer menu
Loaded fries are the only side with anything in them, and jalapeno under cheese and bacon is closer to flavour than to heat.
How to order for a mixed table
- Order the shared food mild and add sauce cups — always
- Put the Tiger Steak on one person, not in the middle of the table
- On a boil, the heat is a table-wide decision, so pick for the most sensitive
- Two cups of ranch is never a wasted order
The short version: one genuinely hot item, a few warm ones, a lot of choices, and a sides menu built so that heat is something you add rather than something you accept. It is all on the Philly menu and the wings menu.
Heat, on your terms
Nine Phillys, wings at every count, and a sides menu built so you add the heat rather than accept it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the spiciest thing on the menu?
The Tiger Steak — ribeye with jalapenos and a blackened beer sauce. It is the only item that carries a warning on the menu.
Is the buttermilk buffalo chicken hot?
No. It is made with buffalo mild sauce and ranch, which makes it the gentlest buffalo item we do.
Can you choose how hot a seafood boil is?
Yes. The seasoning and the spice level are separate choices, so you can have the flavour you want at a heat you can handle.
What if I do not want anything spicy?
Almost nothing has heat built in. Every Philly except the Tiger Steak, all four burgers, the wraps, the salads and the whole appetizer menu are mild unless you add something.
Which sauce is the hottest?
Hot sauce. Honey hot and honey hot lemon pepper have heat too, but the sugar and citrus take the edge off it.
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