Evening Edge

There is, or was, or was rumored to be, a restaurant in Paris with an unusual front-door policy. The hostess would appraise new male arrivals and then bestow on each one either a kiss or a slap.

You'd think you might want the kiss, right? But what if it's a pity kiss because you're too much of a doofus to merit a slap? Besides, you would have braced yourself for a slap as you walked through the front door. By that point, you'd feel something like regret if you didn't get one.

John Kessler writes food features and a column about food and more for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution E-mail John Kessler Recent Kessler columns Your fool-proof checklist for Thanksgiving  Hours of low-temperature cooking yield tender, juicy meat  Different things to sample on my new dining menu         More John Kessler Related: John Kessler's blog: Food & More John Kessler's recipes Meridith Ford Goldman's Table Talk Jeanne Besser's Feeding Frenzy Evening Edge Atlanta Restaurant reviews and search Recipes from Atlanta restaurants Favorite Atlanta recipes

The food equivalent can be found in the pimiento de padron — a Spanish pepper that is usually mild but every once in a while will slap the bejesus out of you.

These small peppers — which are usually pan-fried whole in olive oil and served with only a little coarse salt — make a popular tapa in and around the famous pilgrimage town of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Diners pick their way through a plate of these sweet, thumb-size pods knowing that every 10th or 12th one will be spicy enough to require a gulp of beer.

Now that American farmers have discovered this quick-to-wither pepper, they have begun to catch on here. They're popular in small-plates spots in the San Francisco Bay area, and have made what appears to be their maiden Atlanta voyage to Cuerno, the Midtown Spanish restaurant.

Curious consumers, however, have the option of mail order. La Tienda, a Spanish foods retailer (www.latienda.com), has convinced a Virginia farm to grow the peppers from imported seed and ships 1-pound boxes (about 100 peppers) for $13.50.

When my box arrived, I wasted no time in cooking a batch in a film of olive oil in my cast-iron skillet. After a quick shake over high heat, they were blistered and fragrant. With a sprinkle of kosher salt, they turned addictively delicious —earthy, sweet, a little metallic, sharp in the nostrils and then — pow! A spicy one. My 10-year-old quickly noticed that the hot ones were usually larger.

I was struck by the similarity of these capiscums to the shishito — a slightly larger pepper, this one from Japan, that is picked while still immature, cooked whole and an equal friend to a cold glass of beer. These peppers can also be (usually) mild or (infrequently) hot. However, most of the shishitos available in markets here (try Tomato Japanese Grocery in Norcross, where a small package of six costs 60 cents) are mild.

The next day I began researching the two peppers and soon learned that the shishito was often used as a fill-in for the padron in American Spanish restaurants in years past. I also found a Web site for Quetzal Farm in Santa Rosa, Calif., which grows both.

"They're sort of like the french fry of the pepper world," owner Keith Abeles says of the two stubby varieties that make for such great hand-to-mouth snacking.

When Abeles started growing shishito peppers, he brought a sample to a Japanese chef and "three seconds later it was in the deep fryer" in a jacket of tempura batter.

But lately, says Abeles, it's been all about the padron, which he sells in farmers markets and to the many San Francisco restaurants that use them. He had to learn to pick them very small because once they surpassed a certain size, they become invariably hot.

By the way, since shishitos can sub for padrons, I figured the reverse was true. I took some of my remaining peppers over to a Japanese friend's house, and she wasted no time in cooking them. She grilled them on a grate over an open gas flame until they blistered and then seasoned them simply with soy sauce and sesame oil. Yum, yum, pow!