THE first spoonful of the world’s hottest curry doesn’t burn for a few seconds.

Just as you begin to congratulate yourself on braving the famous Polash Meltdown the heat begins to surface, not instantly, but slowly, like a sun rising over a hill. A rapidly growing gradient of heat, snowballing into a breath of fire.

As I’m gulping down my emergency milk, brow damp with sweat and my hands patting my coat in search of Rennie, my masculinity takes a further blow.

“This isn’t quite as hot as usual because I don’t have the right chillies in stock,” says owner Sheikh Mohammed Khalique.

“Normally you can multiply this by twenty.”

The real deal measures a breath stealing ONE MILLION on the Scoville Heat Unit scale (SHU). It includes the bird’s eye chilli (100,000 SHU), the legendary naga chilli, which measures more than 900,000 SHU and is so potent it has to be handled with gloves, and bhut jolokia, aka ghost chilli, notoriously the world’s hottest at 1,000,000 SHU on its own.

Launched in 2009, the restaurant described its dish as ‘the fires of hell on a fork’ and offered anyone who completed the meal a certificate, a photo, a t-shirt reading ‘I ate the Polash Meltdown and survived’, and the respect of everyone in the room.

“We launched it to raise money for the Help For Heroes charity in 2009,” Khalique explains.

“We had no idea it would be so popular. We had every TV station down here with camera crews.

“In the end 22 people completed it and won t-shirts. Now we only make it on special request.”

The Meltdown is a crowd drawing, headline grabbing novelty. But the restaurant is not just a one trick pony.

A firm favourite with locals for the past 35 years, The Polash, which has restaurants in West Road, Shoeburyness and Station Road, Burnham, also boasts an international reputation and has recently scooped the prestigious Certificate of Excellence from review website, Trip Advisor, for consistently brilliant feedback.

“I am so, so grateful to every customer who took the time to review and write about their experience at the Polash," says Khalique.

During the early sixties his father, Haji Sheikh A Razzak, came to the UK from Sylhet in Bangladesh with his family of six sons and two daughters.

The four eldest boys started work in the restaurant business, founding the Polash 12 years later, naming their new venture after a beautiful, orange-red flower.

“When we opened we were one of five Indian or Bangladeshi restaurants in the South of Essex,” Khalique insists.

“Now there are more than 70.”

The restaurant itself is a small and cozy establishment posted with glowing newspaper reviews and celebrity photos signed with compliments.

As well as trying the Meltdown, I also had a bite of the self-proclaimed World’s Hottest Naan.

Let the record show I - who had never before ventured above a rogan - even dipped one into the other and suffered the incredible and agonising rush of heat a wiser man would have pre-empted.

Diners are even asked to sign a waiver before completing the challenge. The curry was developed by Khalique’s son, Hasnath, who he says can eat spoonfuls without so much as a wince.

“We tried lots of different recipes because we wanted it to be hot but also taste nice,” he says.

“You have to be careful. A restaurant in Scotland tried to better us and seven people were rushed to hospital.”

For the brutal Polash Meltdown recipe see the Taste supplement in today's paper.