At sushi restaurants such as Shalala in the Colonia Condesa, your California roll will probably come with a sprinkling of cheese, and hot jalapeno peppers will float in the dishes of soy sauce.
Out of interest we ordered a side-dish called 'Putine' which the Canadian chef seems to have brought with him: a meal-in-one mess of French fries, chorizo, cheese, jalapeno peppers and gravy.
Measuring a scorching 1.4 million Scoville units - the Scoville scale is used to measure the heat of the fruit - the Komodo Dragon is far hotter than a jalapeno pepper, which is just 3,500 Scovilles.
Two Boots serves such dishes as ravioli with jalapeno pesto.
I always get the Sour Cream Hen House — grilled chicken, Thai basil, jalapeno, sour-cream sambal, Chinese broccoli — double greens, no rice, if I'm being abstemious.
But Mr. Surida, a union carpenter in Manhattan, cared only about the volleyball - and the chicken, cow lung and jalapeno peppers he was cooking for his family.
Usuzukuri, for example, featured very fresh, thin-sliced fluke sprinkled with tobiko and finely chopped jalapeno and served with ponzu sauce.
The shrimp was the best choice — large, well seasoned and tossed with a bright cornucopia of nicely cooked vegetables: asparagus, zucchini, green beans, mushrooms, greens, red pepper and jalapeno rounds.
The jalapeno juice is mixed with lime, seasoned with salt and thickened with a bit of agar agar so it isn't too watery.
They shared appetizers: pan-fried potato dumplings with roasted maitake mushrooms, shallots, thyme, and pecorino ($9), and shrimp and jalapeno grits enhanced by a fried egg and Tasso bacon ($13).
Made with roasted chickpeas, this exquisite hummus "deluxe" was flavored with fresh ginger, cumin, garlic and jalapeno and finished with sherry wine vinegar.
