Vide the spice bros. You discover them as quickly as you stroll in. Full tables — a foursome right here, a sextet there — egging one another on, dapping one another up. They ratchet their bites from spicy to spicier to spiciest. Their mecca is Ugly Child, the longtime Carroll Gardens Thai spot that reopened this 12 months in an even bigger house off the BQE in that different bro paradise, Williamsburg. Right here, spice is a bragging proper and a promise. A server described the menu’s three sections — “The Laughs,” “The Cries,” “The Ugly” — as progressing from gentle to incinerating. “You take pleasure in and are blissful,” he defined, gesturing from prime to backside, “or you’ve gotten enjoyable and die.” It is a joke, barely.
Spice chauvinism has a protracted historical past, but it surely has by no means been as current as it’s in at present’s period of Sizzling Ones, the digital wings-and-chat present that launched simply earlier than the unique Ugly Child opened in 2017, has grown to develop into an $80 million enterprise and is now a required cease on the A-list celeb press tour. The time was ripe for Ugly Child, which closed in 2024, to return, refreshed, in a bigger house in Williamsburg. Its outdated house, in Carroll Gardens, is now within the arms of former staffers who opened Hungry Thirsty final 12 months. Hungry Thirsty birthed Manhattan’s Hungry Spicy, a good hotter sibling in Chelsea, in July, the place dishes are rated on a four-flame scale: one wisp for “lowkey spicy,” ascending to “actual spicy,” “burning scorching,” and “no mercy.” To evaluate from the traces for a desk, leisure spice chasing is now large enough to assist all three.
“I needed to name the ambulance two instances,” a server at Hungry Spicy warned us in regards to the menu’s hottest dish, kua kling, a four-flame southern-Thai specialty of floor beef and curry paste topped with a fried egg. Two tables over, a few guys have been perspiring madly, one in all them slumped backward within the sales space, whereas a girl at their desk filmed their demise on her telephone.
I loved the dishes I attempted at Hungry Spicy and am blissful to report no ambulance was essential. For balancing taste with warmth, although, there’s no beating the unique. I made for Ugly Child, the place, conscious of my very own limitations, I introduced the largest spice bro I do know, a blonde lady from the Midwest whose bona fides are generally doubted and who has a protracted historical past proving her opps unsuitable. (Spice bro is a gender-neutral time period.) She as soon as gained a prize for ending a fried rice at UnTable, one other high-heat Thai standout in Carroll Gardens.
Some dishes at Ugly Child look spicier than they’re (just like the catfish, top-left). Most, nonetheless, are simply as scorching as you’d hope. Hugo Yu.
Some dishes at Ugly Child look spicier than they’re (just like the catfish, top-left). Most, nonetheless, are simply as scorching as you’d hope. Hugo Yu.
The excellent news is that Ugly Child, regardless of the lengthy shadow of its repute, doesn’t require a dwelling will or a DNR. Chef Sirichai Sreparplarn, as soon as once more on the helm, calibrates pleasure with ache, his dishes radiating the superfecta of herb, lime, garlic, and fishiness alongside brute-force spice, even in essentially the most perilous. You may ease in with no spice in any respect, a plate of battered pumpkin fries able to be dragged by means of tamarind sauce and to unseat the sweet-potato fry’s diner supremacy. From there, choose your approach by means of the mid-tier spice of the “Cries” part, which is mostly tolerable for all however essentially the most cautious, although that varies dish by dish. A vegan choice, a ruddy, massaman-ish coconut curry with eggplant and Malay-style pineapple, is a real medium. Crispy catfish in dry purple curry, which arrives in glistening hunks scattered with fried basil leaves, seems to be extra harmful than it’s: Regardless of the fire-red chiles lurking all through, it’s extra candy than scorching, like a Thai tackle Basic Tso’s. (It is a praise.) And don’t miss, but in addition don’t underestimate, a seemingly shocking mixture of hulled strawberries with dried shrimp, tiny purple buttons of sliced chile, and fish sauce. They give the impression of being harmless, these berries, till the warmth hits you, after the candy and the funk, a undercover agent, a scorching betrayal.
My bro was making her approach by means of these blissful mediums with out a hair misplaced; we summited to the “Ugly” with eagerness (her) and trepidation (me). I was heating up in and out: Underneath the brilliant lights of the eating room, bouncing off the lurid Technicolor partitions, the warmth appeared amplified. Spice accrues, and the saucy dregs of starters on the plate have been infusing even manageable dishes comparable to floor pork stomach with shrimp paste, its caramel sweetness turning stay and electrical. A kang prik curry of pork leg and pork rinds had a bitter, natural fragrance and unfolding layers of funk, although the meat itself was robust. (It has since been changed by a combo of oxtail and beef tongue.) Then the menu’s spiciest dish, a red-curry stir-fry often known as pad ped, arrived.
“This one builds,” the bro stated approvingly. “It’s a grower, not a bathe.” A platter of tiny cubes of skirt steak blended with skinny slips of what the menu calls “honeycomb” (as in tripe) was completely spattered with chile seeds. I’ve now had it two instances, as soon as when it got here out as the primary dish and as soon as because the final. (The restaurant was nonetheless working by means of some early jitters.) Final is finest: When eaten earlier than different dishes, the pad ped successfully blows out your palate for the rest. However as the top, it manages to bop between sultriness and outright fireplace. The expertise — I can consider no different phrase for it — unfolds. True daredevils might need for extra: “I wish to really feel scared, even only for a second, and I by no means did,” my bro stated. I was proud not solely to endure however to take pleasure in it alongside my 14th glass of water. (Servers know to make these cooling rounds; plain white rice, one other sop, is commonly replenished.)
We’d been hazed and survived. The invoice arrived with out request or ceremony. There isn’t a dessert.
Scratchpad
Ugly Child
To Beat the Warmth
Not like the sooner Child, this one has a full bar and gives a connoisseur’s choice of craft beers and ciders.
Work-in-Progress
Dishes are being added because the restaurant will get up to the mark. On my visits, some promised gadgets weren’t but out there.
A Blistering Tempo
Owing to excessive demand, Ugly Child’s administration mandates strict cut-off dates for tables. They’re enforced, too.
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