Hell's 'Pizza Roulette' comes with a warning 'It doesn't cost. But someone pays.' Photo / Hell Pizza
Hell's 'Pizza Roulette' comes with a warning 'It doesn't cost. But someone pays.' Photo / Hell Pizza
Kiwis are being offered a gut-wrenching, mouth-watering, tear-jerking trip for the taste buds - in the form of a pizza.
Hell Pizza, known for its controversial marketing campaigns, is challenging customers to turn their dinner into a round of Russian Roulette with a chilli sauce it claims is equivalent to pepper spray used by US police.
Two drops of the potent sauce are added to one slice of the pizza.
The gamble is, you don't know which slice it is.
Considered one of the hottest sauces in the world, 3am reserve - has a rating of 2 million scoville units, the measurement for hotness of chilli, and is guaranteed to get the nerve endings tingling, eyes watering and nose running.
That's 1000 times stronger than a jalapeno and compares to a hot Tabasco at 15,000 scovilles or cayenne pepper at up to 50,000.
When ordering, customers can choose to have their pizza invisibly sauced up at no extra charge. It's fitting, given the company motto: "It doesn't cost, but someone pays''.
First however, diners must read a disclaimer saying the company takes no responsibility for "loss of mental faculties, emotional damage, eye bulge, bathroom destruction, gastro-intestinal niggles'' as well as night terrors, alien abduction, mass hysteria, social awkwardness and internet trolls, among other things.
In a YouTube video, Wellington cricketers the Firebirds take on the challenge, leaving the unlucky player teary-eyed, sweating and gulping down water after eating the rogue slice.
In another video a man takes his first bite into a pizza only to discover it's been sauced, causing him to groan and cry out in pain.
Hell Pizza co-director Stu McMullin has played pizza roulette several times "and each time it kicked my ass.
"It is undoubtedly a challenging game and not for the faint-hearted,'' he said.
Fellow chilli-lover Scott Manning, owner of Tongue Hammer Food which supplies the sauce, warned people hallucinations could occur after ingestion.
"The sauce is so hot we have had to decant it into smaller medicinal dropper bottles, so the Hell Pizza staff can add sauce to the random slice drop by drop.''
The Blair's 3am sauce needs two million parts water to one part sauce until there is no hotness detected.
