Jonathan David here at David Chang’s newest Fuku location in Santa Monica, trying the off-the-menu
Rippin’ Hot Chicken. You ready? All right, thank you so
much. I appreciate it. [gasping] It’s all over. It is all over. Dead, mm-mm. If you keep going, it’s not as spicy. Customer: Not true. Jonathan: I love hot chicken, but hot, spicy, blazing chicken? My insides does not agree. I tried this hot chicken at Howlin’ Ray’s, and it deteriorated my insides. My nose is running. [coughing] I need to
spit every five seconds. And I’m here again because
I love it and I’m ready. David Chang’s Fuku location
here in Santa Monica, I am ready for you. We are gonna try the Rippin’ Hot Chicken, and I will win, even with the
gloves and a carton of milk. Whoo, Fuku! Alex Muñoz-Suarez: The concept was founded about five years ago in 2014 with Dave’s sort of love and fascination with fried-chicken sandwiches. In that sort of effort to
continually wanting to innovate, which is part of, like, what Momofuku is and who David Chang is as a chef, he wanted to create a great
fried-chicken sandwich made a little differently, where we use primarily thigh
meat, which is dark meat, and the batter, the coating of the chicken is very unique in the sense
that we use chickpea flour. LA is an amazing city. Many Los Angelinos have grown to just love incredibly spicy food. So, we start with two primary spices. One is Carolina Reapers,
and scorpion peppers. We also add a good amount
of cinnamon, sugar, Chinese five spice,
fennel seed to the mix, which helps it create an additional sort of addictive quality
to the fried chicken. Customer: So excited to be
here just because my roommate was talking about this
place for six months, and it’s finally open,
and I beat her to it. Ha! [laughing] Jonathan: Moment of truth, here we go. First step, they said it was gloves. So, you know, I’ma listen. Where have you been in a moment where you have to put on
gloves in order to eat? Mommy never taught you that. So, here we go. Oh, I [coughing]. Whoo-hoo hoo! That one went on my insides. Oh, man. Here we are. [sniffing] I can taste it already. I can…oof. You ready? Mm. Oh. OK! Oh, shoot! OK! [clears throat] Camera operator: How’s your throat? Jonathan: All over the palate. Wow, yeah, that’s spice, but that’s nice. Wow, I think my eyes are
getting a little teary. I think they give [clears throat] one carton of milk. I’m gonna need another one. I didn’t do a prayer this morning. It is all over. I can’t even [clears throat]. They said it was really good
with the ranch. [clears throat] I forgot. [slurping] He’s laughing, he’s laughing. He knows, he knows. You’ve had it before? He got the baldy. You know his baldy was
sweating. [laughing] Where you going with the milk? I need that. I need all those gallons of milk, please! This will take over every taste bud and break it down, OK? It’ll give you the jabs. And then for the knockout. Whoo. This one’s hot. Wow. We’re gonna see if some guests here are willing to challenge themselves and see how they can do with this. Let’s go see what the
line is looking like. I know some people are waiting to come in. Producer: Try it on camera? Jonathan: Yeah, let’s try it on camera. You’re trying it too, let’s go. There we go. A good bite, a good bite. How you feel? Oh, we got two bites. There you go.
Customer: It’s good. This is good.
Jonathan: It’s good? And scorpion. Oh, we’re going for the
second bite. There you go. You feel?
[customer coughing] Oh, there it go. There we go. Make sure when you take that bite, don’t touch your eyes or anything. All right, let’s do it. Customer: It’s hot. Jonathan: Ah, yeah, you can’t think now. All you can do is feel. All you can do is feel. You got the ooh [inhales]
ahh [inhales] ooh. We did it, people. We conquered it. We may be hugging the
toilet a little bit later, but we did it. We tried some chicken. We have some gentlemen here. He’s still drinking some water here. Come on down, try the off-the-menu Rippin’ Fried Hot Chicken. See, now this one… Delicioso, OK? Wow. Cheers!