By Teo Pau Lin, 06 February 2005
Sunday Times

Mrs Nancy Teo, 50, co-owner of Beppu Menkan Japanese restaurant, holding up a bowl of Level 8 ramen

At Beppu Menkan Japanese restaurant, eating is as much enjoyment as it is torture.

Diners habitually feel their faces turning bright red, their lips swelling and scalps itching - all from eating noodles so spicy that a woman customer once fainted after taking a few slurps.

'She came with a few colleagues who wanted to challenge each other to finish a bowl each,' recalls restaurant owner Michael Seng, 50.

'She must have really forced herself because after a while, she just collapsed on her chair. We called the ambulance, but luckily, she woke up before it arrived.'

In this Far East Square eatery, ramen comes in five levels of spiciness - marked by one-, two-, four-, six- and eight-chilli symbols on the menu. A bowl costs between $5.80 and $12.80, depending on the topping.

Mr Seng says most customers tear and whimper for help at four chillies. The woman who fainted had six chillies.

To see what damage the eight-chilli level could do, LifeStyle ordered it last week - and surrendered after just one sip.

The thick, murky-orange soup looked innocuous enough, but it was so spicy it was positively inhumane.

Even after I ordered a one-chilli ramen and was tucking into the far-tamer concoction, I was still sniffling from the earlier sting.

Shockingly, the restaurant receives as many as 20 orders of the eight-chilli ramen every week, and mostly from young women.

'I don't know why, maybe because they think they can lose weight,' Mr Seng says with a chuckle.

But its most ardent fan is a secondary school student who comes every week for his fix - and completely cleans out each bowl.

Mr Seng introduced the five-level scale when he opened the restaurant six years ago as a way to draw adventurous young customers.

His Kyushu-style soup is made with pork ribs, chicken bones, seaweed and tuna. A secret-recipe chilli paste - so spicy that suppliers often complain about getting their hands seared - is then added for that fiery kick.

He cautions customers against being too gung-ho about their chilli-endurance levels.

At six- and eight-chillies, the soup's taste is completely overpowered by the spiciness, and many customers give up and waste the food. Others end up with bad cases of diarrhoea.

He advises customers to start from one-chilli and work their way up, adding that he goes only as high as two-chilli himself.

Still, many Singaporeans find outrageously spicy food too good to resist.

Every day, Chuan Szechuan restaurant in Purvis Street receives up to 20 orders for Flamboyant Fish, its spiciest dish which comes submerged under 5cm of chilli oil.

But owner Eric Tan says Singaporeans pale in comparison to Chinese mainlanders in chilli-taking prowess.

In Ting Yuan, his other outlet in Liang Seah Street, only natives from Sichuan and Hunan province dare order the spiciest level of mala steamboat, which is two-thirds chilli oil.

It is the same story in Roadside Stall Hotpot in Marina South. Owner Andrew Wong says a Sichuanese regular comes two or three times every week for the spiciest level of mala steamboat, even though it gives her a runny stomach each time.

Still, customer reactions don't get more explosive than at Beppu Menkan.

After sampling a bowl of eight-chilli ramen, a Singaporean Indian woman once threatened to sue Mr Seng, but later retracted it.

Instead of scaring him into withdrawing the menacing items from his menu, it has galvanised his noble cause.

'There is a saying that eating chillies can help you forget your problems,' he theorises.

Call it hot-house therapy.

Beppu Menkan
134 Amoy Street, Far East Square
Tel: 6438-0328