Exactly. Unfortunately, there's no such place around where I live, so I have to just trust them whenever they say it's "spicy." Even the same place tends to not even be consistent. Like, I love mapo tofu. It's one of my favorite dishes of all time. Mapo tofu should be spicy. Tongue-numbing spicy. As in it's the kind of dish Mao spoke about. This one place I get from either gives me the most tepid mapo tofu where there's no spice whatsoever, or it's so hot that sweat beads on my forehead. I much prefer the latter.