Legends of the Phaal

“Why are you getting that?” Ganesh asked when I ordered the phaal. To be sure, it’s never a good sign when a restaurant’s staff turns its nose at the food coming out of the kitchen. But I understood his dismay. Brick Lane Curry House, a standout in the mulligatawny of sub-par, East 6th Street Indian joints, has dozens of excellent options, and I had chosen the one gut bomb.

“Have you ever tried the phaal?” I asked Ganesh.

“Oh, no. Only a few teaspoons. It’s insanity. But you know that.”

I already had an inkling from Brick Lane’s co-owner Sati Sharma, a rotund man from New Delhi. “You can pull your teeth out after the second bite—that’s how numb your mouth gets,” he told me.

This would probably be music to the ears of a “chilehead,” those spicy food masochists. There are legions of them across the pond, where phaal originated on London’s own Brick Lane. Somewhere along that strip of Bangladeshi restaurants in the 1970s, a chef concocted this fiery curry. Its apocrypha, according to Pat Chapman, British author of the New Curry Bible and expert on all things spicy, is that phaal was a means of revenge against the “lager louts”— sloshed Brits who arrived at their restaurants past the pub’s closing time and spewed out all manner of rude insults. Phaal, which in Hindi means fruit, was the closest the chefs could come to saying “fart,” something the louts would have plenty of the next day.

Azmal Hussain of Preen, a restaurant on London’s Brick Lane, claims that the meaning of the word “Phaal” (which is also spelled “phal”) in Bengali means “jump”—like a jump in temperature or excitement. He also claims Brits have a higher tolerance for heat because of the cold.

If all of these explanations sound specious, there is one strong piece of evidence that the Brits really do like it hot—hotter than us, anyway. When you finish the phaal in London, no one gives you beer.

Here on 6th Street, however, a chalkboard advertises Brick Lane’s running dare: Order the phaal, finish it, and we’ll buy you a beer. It’s the kind of trick Homer Simpson would fall for, and as it happens, two of my friends already have. I learned about the dish first from Jimmy, an adventurous eater who was turned onto it by a British business associate. After his dubious victory, Jimmy told me that his picture was going to be posted Brick Lane’s website. One of the rewards of finishing the phaal is being inducted to the P’hall of Fame, where you are forever memorialized online as a “Curry Monster.” So I went to the site, and found my friend Cliff. The restaurant estimates that one or two people, many of them Brit ex-pats, finish the dish every week, but not everyone sends in their photos. Sati Sharma speaks with reverence about one such mystery man, Alan Solsberry, who has eaten the phaal at least a dozen times. “He has guts of steel,” says Sharma.

I do not have such iron-clad insides, but I was willing to see if I could stomach the phaal just once, as Cliff “The Curry Killer” Ransom, my dinner guest, had done. Though he advised me to order my phaal with meat, I decided on paneer. I thought the homemade cheese would help cool things down, along with lots and lots of raita, and nan. Then the nuclear curry arrived. It looked like roasted Rooster sauce—that red hot condiment with the green cap and rooster on it—but its ingredients were much more complex: dried red chilies and fresh green ones, Kasmiri chilies, white chili powder, black pepper powder, and black peppercorns. Pure pain.

“I understand now—the meat,” I said. I meant that chicken or lamb would have helped mask the curry’s heat, unlike paneer, which neither added flavor, nor took away the fire. But I wasn’t able to say more just then—after a few bites, I felt as though I had breathed in fiberglass. Cliff understood, and spoke for the entirety of our meal, regaling me with tales about his recent trip to Arizona, his love life, his family. For the most part I just nodded and complained.

“I can’t believe they have the nerve to add a whole chili to this,” I said, picking out the fresh green bugger.

“I know,” said Cliff. “I went through this same stage—anger. It’s followed by disbelief.”

Without asking, Ganesh brought over a mango lhassi to quench the afterburn. I alternated between sips of it, my beer, bites of nan, and every so often another forkful of the fiery phaal, now almost pink from the yogurt sauce swirled on top of it.

“Keep your eyes on the prize,” Cliff said, pointing to our sweating bottle of Kingfisher. I nodded, thankful for the encouragement, but it was too late. I was full, and now desperate to get home. I asked the busboy to take away our plates. Then Ganesh came out to congratulate me.

“You finished it!” he said. “There was nothing left in the bowl.”

I explained that I had simply dumped the bowl of phaal on my plate, then buried it in rice.

“Well, there was hardly any left. I’ll give you this beer,” he said.

It seemed like an accomplishment.

Brick Lane Curry House

306-308 E. 6th St. (betw. 1st & 2nd Aves.)

212-979-2900.