Get Spook Country.

Read chapter 20; it ends with the above quote.

Read chapter 29:

Not just hot [Szechuan], but correctly, expertly seasoned.  Hot like when they brought you a plate of lemon slices, to suck on as needed, to partially neutralize the burn.  It has been a long time since Milgrim had had food like that.  It had been a long time since he'd eaten a meal that had provided any memorable pleasure at all.  The Chinese he was most familiar with these days was along the lines of the stepped-on Cantonese they brought him at the laundry on Lafayette, but just now he was recalling that sensation, strangely delightful, of drinking cold water on top of serious pepper-burn -- how the water filled your mouth entirely, but somehow without touching it, like a molecule-thick silver membrane of Chinese antimatter, like a spell, some magic insulation.

I love William Gibson.