Shishito vs Padrón

The Padrón has a paper trail that most peppers lack. Díaz, Núñez-Fernández and Veloso (2023) record that Franciscan monks brought seed from Tabasco, Mexico to the convent of Herbón, in the municipality of Padrón in Galicia, in the seventeenth century, and the regulatory council for the protected name adds that dried, ground pepper from Herbón was already being traded by the late 1700s. The specification for the Protected Designation of Origin Pemento de Herbón has been in force since July 2009 according to Spain's agriculture ministry. It requires fruit picked green at 3.5 to 5.5 cm long and no more than 2 cm across. The Shishito is Japanese, its name means lion's head for the wrinkled tip, and it is izakaya food, blistered and served with soy or ponzu.

Both are famous for the same trick: mostly mild, occasionally not. The Galician saying is 'uns pican e outros non', some are hot and some are not.

In practice a mild Padrón has a grassy, faintly nutty flavor with a little bitterness, and a hot one is a genuine jolt. A Shishito is sweeter, thinner skinned and softer, and its hot fruit is a surprise rather than a shock.

These two substitute for each other on menus more than any other pair here. Both are C. annuum, picked immature, thin walled, cooked whole in hot oil and eaten by the stem. In Galicia the plate is pimientos de Padrón with coarse salt. In Japan it is shishito under soy. The difference is that the Spanish pepper tastes more like a pepper and the Japanese one tastes more like a vegetable. Which one you want depends on whether you came for the roulette.