Top Five Spicy Restaurants to Beat the Summer Heat

John Linn

"Peppa" sauce from Lovey's Roti. That'll cool you right the F off.

​It's hot out. Like standing sweat, hair-matted-down, ass-stuck-to-the-seat hot. And thanks to the six months of virtual summer we get around here, it doesn't look like it's going to be relenting anytime soon.

When it's this hot out, all you want to do is sit inside with a cold drink and get fanned by attractive music video stand-ins. But food can also be a great way to escape the heat. Specifically spicy food, preferably served with a cool beer. Wait a second: Spicy foods cooling you off is actually a contradiction, right? Wrong. The secret is that eating something hot doesn't drop your body temperature; it makes you feel cooler. How that works is when you eat something spicy, it gets your blood flowing toward your stomach. That in turn takes blood away from your extremities, which is what makes you feel like your skin is actually cooling off. Couple that with a little bit of habanero-induced sweat and eating something tongue-numbingly spicy should cool you off in no time.

So take a look at our list of five local restaurants where, thanks to food that's actually hotter than our Florida sun, you can feel just a little bit cooler than anywhere else.

Lovey's Roti Shop
I don't know if you've ever visited the Caribbean islands, but I'm told it gets pretty hot there too. And what do Trinis do when the sun grows too sweltering? They hole up with some spicy-as-hell roti and a super-cold lager beer. You can do just that at Lovey's, where the mango kuchela is tart, the sada and bussupshut is freshly baked, and the fiery-green Scotch bonnet sauce known colloquially as "peppa" will have you sweating in no time flat. Order a cold beer or a grape soda to go with it and you'll be cool as a cucumber (which, incidentally, you'll also find in their famous aloo pies).

​ Sheila's Famous BBQ Conch & More
It's no coincidence that barbecue is most popular in the summer, when the weather in most parts of the country makes standing over a barrel smoker for a few hours sound attractive. Here in South Florida, that can be a painful experience. But not if you don't have to do the smoking, and definitely not at Sheila's, where the smoky, hot barbecue pairs best with the cool flavors of conch salad. The meaty, smoky pork has a perfect pair in that salad, all tart with lime and kicked up to extra-hot levels, if you prefer, with the addition of slivers of orange Scotch bonnet pepper. That conch, all chewy and light, takes you away to a breezy island. A seat at a stone table under the shady overhang at Sheila's helps as well.

Pho Hoa
The Vietnamese chain serves some intensely hot Asian food, starting with boiling pho that you can kick up with the absolute hottest slices of raw jalapeño you'll find. But soup may not be on your priority list, and that's OK. Then try a cold chicken salad with vermicelli rice noodles, slathered with tangy nuoc cham and plenty of ridiculously hot, lemongrass-infused sambal chili sauce. The cool/spicy salad, paired with Pho Hoa's ice-cold boba smoothies, is dynamite. Those smoothies, by the way, made with fruit or tea or tapioca, are the absolute best around.

​ East Coast Burrito Factory
East Coast serves about the hottest hot salsa you'll find anywhere in South Florida. Made with habanero peppers, this stuff once made me physically cry when I decided not to stop at the clear warning signs -- loss of vision, weakness, and a feeling like someone had set off a nuclear bomb in my stomach. Of course, you can opt for the mild salsa on your big-ass burrito. But where's the fun in that? East Coast doesn't serve beer, so here's my suggestion: Get your burro loaded with hot salsa to-go. Grab a couple of cans of Tecate or Modello Especial and wrap them in foil, the way Mexicans do. Take that combo to the beach and enjoy the sun like only someone with his mouth on fire can.

Treasure Trove
The Trove, as it's known in these parts, has everything you need to embrace summertime in Florida. It's an open-air bar that's so informal (and frankly pretty divey) that you can totally come straight off Fort Lauderdale beach in your swim trunks and not feel out of place. The beer is cold and plentiful, with decent options on tap and almost constant specials on Corona. It also serves some halfway decent Mexican food for a bar of its ilk. And lest there be any questions about the food's providence, you can nuke your tacos (which on Tuesdays are just one buck a pop) with a veritable cavalcade of hot sauces. There are so many varieties of hot sauce up on the Trove's wall -- habanero-based, Texas and Louisiana-style, Caribbean, and more -- that you can literally change up your poison with every bite. Ah, hot sauce, tacos, and beer. Sounds like summer's best friend. 

Got a suggestion for spicy summer food? Let us know in the comments field below.