On Friday, April 26, Asian Culture Appreciation Club (ACAC) hosted their annual fire noodle challenge in D11 at lunch. Participants had to pay an entry fee of $5 and sign up in advance. During the challenge, participants competed to see who could eat a bowl of spicy ramen the fastest. Add-ons, including milk and peppers, could be purchased for an additional fee. Individuals not participating could also buy add-ons for a participant. All funds raised from this challenge went towards Stop AAPI Hate foundations.

Typically, there are two winners, but this year, there was one winner and two runner-ups, who all received prizes.

Junior Adam Barash, this year’s winner, said that “the noodles were really hot and my mouth burned for a while afterwards, but it was fun.”

Additionally, “[ACAC] had habaneros for the first time this year. Usually, [they] only have jalapenos and it’s a lot different because habaneros are a lot hotter,” future president of ACAC junior Wendy Bo added.

Bo explained the logistics behind the challenge: “[the leadership team] takes a day in April or May during lunch,” then they send a Google Form because “[they] need to know how many people are going to participate so [they] get a rough number of how much stuff [they] need to buy.” On the chosen day, they “use the first 15 minutes of lunch to set up the food and then it’s usually the last 10 minutes of lunch when [they] do the actual challenge.”

However, senior Anna Chen and co-president of ACAC explained that “[ACAC] has had some trouble with preparing the noodles before or during the challenge because we only have those 45 minutes of lunch to get the noodles ready and make sure everyone actually gets to try the challenge.” Since preparing noodles during lunch is time consuming, Chen said that she hopes ACAC will “cook the noodles beforehand then heat them up [at lunch] so we can get the noodles much faster” next year.