The Spiciest Night of My Life with Canada's Hottest Man

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The Spiciest Night of My Life with Canada's Hottest Man

I spent one night with Claude Dubé, the self-proclaimed chilihead and award-winning hot sauce masochist, who can tolerate up to 16 million Scoville units, a.k.a. the hottest of the hot on the spice spectrum.

Claude Dubé won't be winning tonight's hot sauce competition. But it's not for lack of skill. Dubé can't win this contest because he's no longer allowed to, because he always wins.

The self-proclaimed chilihead and award-winning hot sauce masochist can tolerate up to 16 million Scoville units, the hottest of the hot on the spice spectrum. He's still participating though, as a sort of honorary contestant, and sampling each set of increasingly fiery chicken wings coming out of the kitchen. And despite the organiser's stern warnings, he's even foregone the latex gloves handed out to the other, less experienced competitors.

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Tonight, Dubé is acting as a benevolent chili godfather, a doting spice coach, a superhuman being who seems impervious to the pain and weakness that plague the mere mortals who are competing. At Montreal bar Baron Samedi, this particular challenge is set to go up to six million Scoville units (a jalapeño is between 2,500 and 10,000), using a selection of sauces Dubé himself has curated.

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These ain't sundried tomatoes. Photo by William Gignac.

A hardware store manager by day and hot sauce vlogger by night, Dubé has established himself as Quebec's most infamous chilihead. Dubé says he developed his affection for heat at a young age, building up his tolerance over the decades. "I started when I was six or seven. I saw my dad put crushed chili flakes on his spaghetti. So obviously I wanted to try it."

After a few years of flexing his hot buds with seasonings like Tabasco, Dubé says he temporarily plateaued, "because Quebec isn't a nation that cares for hot peppers." To access more spice in the pre-internet era, he had to wait for the popularisation of Asian restaurants, which allowed him to raise his threshold. Now addicted to the endorphins the heat brings on, Dubé adds extra kick to (nearly) everything he consumes. "The only thing I don't add sauce or spice to is my cereal."

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Fiery chicken wings are distributed to competitors.

Dubé chronicles his passion on his YouTube channel, where he reviews sauces and fresh peppers from around the world. His descriptions are akin to that of a sommelier's: Dubé's refined hotbuds can detect the faintest aroma of maple syrup, the slightest hint of coriander. He speaks of bouquets and mouthfeel as if the blazing condiments were fine wines.

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Above, Claude Dubé's bilingual review of the chocolate reaper pepper. "This one has a lot of oil, a lot of placenta," he says, dissecting the fruit's anatomy.

"This one is a fruit sauce, with pineapple, mango, and cinnamon," he describes, licking the sauce off his fingers. "It's a dessert sauce, and I put it on ice cream."

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Contestants feeling the burn.

But the frozen dessert won't melt, because the burn is all in your head. "It's not really heat," Dubé says, going on about nociceptors and capsaicin. "Since it's a chemical stimulus, there's not really any heat in your mouth but your brain can't tell the difference," he says with Buddha-like certainty and calm. "So it's practically an illusion."

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This man doesn't hold a candle to Claude Dubé. Photo by Johann Smith.

Convincing your body of this "mirage," however, is no picnic. Around Dubé, the competition's wannabe chiliheads—many of whom are massive, bearded men—are sweating profusely or crying. The weakest are begging for more beer or even tapping out to chug bottles of complimentary Pepto Bismol.

Dubé says these are rookie mistakes, that the only way to really quell the heat is with lime. "A lot of people will go for milk because that's easily accessible, but the best thing is citrus. The acidity decomposes the capsaicin. It doesn't solve the problem 100 percent, but it diminishes the burn."

As Dubé pops wing after burning wing into his mouth, competitors around him start to show weakness: some are praying while others are starting to look faint. Nearby, one man is hugging himself and rocking back and forth.

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Claude getting moist. Photo by Johann Smith.

Nonplussed, Dubé scans the room with a serene look on his face. He pulls a small baggie out of his pocket, shaking its beady red contents into the air. "Oh! Those aren't strawberries," warns the MC, and Dubé proudly ambles over to the next table to show off the collection of scary little peppers he's grown himself, smirking with delight as the men writhe with pain.

Sitting down to ingest another 1.1 million Scoville units, Dubé develops a slight flush. With the hand that's just held the lethal piece of poultry, he wipes his forehead, dragging a thumb across his eyelid.

Somewhere in the crowd, someone is singing "Ring of Fire."