Hot Sauce Samurai

Iron Chef Comes To SLOW Burn

2005-11-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

The Food Network came to Steinbeck Plaza this week and spent five hours filming Bobby Flay barbecuing sardines and mussels exactly fifteen feet from SLOW Burn so that the store should be clearly visible in every shot! They made us turn off Homer and remove his PETA apron (People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.) Well. They didn't hold a gun to our heads or anything. They asked us nicely; I sensed invisible muscle, so I complied.

Sardines and mussels, it should be noted, have not played a prominent role in the local marine ecology for many years but they're what Monterey was famous for, back in the day. And Bobby Flay only spent an hour posing in front of the grill. As far as I could see, he did no actual cooking.

Then he came into the store. Trailing his entourage.

He stopped when he saw a bottle of Matouk's West Indian Flambeau on the Caribbean shelf. "You got their Calypso and their Hot Pepper sauce?"

"Of course," I said.

"Matouk's is the best sauce ever," said Bobby Flay. He picked up a bottle of Busha Browne's Puka sauce. "This any good?"

"It's great," I said. "But it's Walkerswood under a different label."

Bobby Flay nodded sagely. "You know your stuff." He made a big, sweeping hand gesture. "This is a very cool store."

And then he turned around -- his entourage making scuttling motions like tugboats -- and walked out. Without buying anything.

What is it about these [insert colorful Deadwood epitet here] celebrities? Would it've hurt Bobby Flay to spring for a $7 bottle of Marie Sharp's? God knows those poor sardines and mussels, who were now beating Joan of Arc's record on the barbecue rack, would have greatly benefited.

Sabor Salsa Lizano -- Producto de Costa Rica

2005-11-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

If you've never gone to Costa Rica, you probably don't care about Lizano. The bottle it comes in is big, clunky and dark with one of those anono-labels pasted across it with the name and a kind of Swiss Alpsy scene that has nothing to do with the product. It is the very antithesis of shelf appeal.

So why is it the Number One-most requested product in any hot sauce store?

Because it tastes really good. And that means it makes rice and beans, tortilla and chicken, veggies, pork, black beans and anything else it's poured on taste really good too.

Since 1920 Lizano has been one of the most popular condiments in the world, gracing kitchen and street eatery alike throughout Central America, a brown sauce with a base sweetness from stewed fruits and vegetables, a sharp hint of vinegar, onion, tumeric, nutmeg, allspice, mustard, salt, and black pepper, and finally just enough cayenne to remind everyone that this stuff does include chiles in the mix.

If you've never gone to Costa Rica, you probably don't care about Lizano. But you should.

BAD DADDY

2005-09-19T16:45:00.000-07:00

It sounds pretty silly jumping from a lost city to a lost BBQ sauce.

It is pretty silly.

But then again this blog is at least in theory about fiery foods.

Anyway, about a year ago early one evening a gentleman walked into Slow Burn, our hot sauce store and the not infrequent question, "How do you find all these sauce?"

The answer is pretty dull. Catalogues, internet searches, trade shows, word of mouth... and people send us things.

"I make a bbq sauce," the guy then told me. "Would you be interested in trying it?"

"Sure," said I. "I'm always interested in anything local." The truth was that lots of people make barbeque sauces. Some of them even have their sauce bottled. Most of those sauces are nothing special.

The next afternoon Barbeque Man came back again bearing a Ball Jar with a slick label and something called Bad Daddy's Diablo Sauce. "I'm moving right now," he told me. "I'll come around again and see how you like the sauce."

"Sure," I said.

Folks, Bad Daddy's Diable Sauce was maybe the very best sweet, spicey Kentucky/Tennessee style sauce I've ever used. It was simply fantastic.

When BBQ Man, or Bad Daddy, as we began to call him around the shop didn't return after a week -- it was time to hunt him down. Careful examination of his label revealed the sad fact. There was no contact information at all, not so much as a company name or a phone number.

Well, he'll be back in some day, we told ourselves.

Again.

And again

And again.

He never has been.

There's a moral in this story somewhere. I'm at a loss to find it. We sell some excellent barbeque sauces. It's hard to beat the Bonesuckin' Sauce from North Carolina, or Pappy's sauces from Kentucky, or the incredible Dinosaur Roadhouse sauces from Upstate New York like Wango Tango habanero. I swear by all of them.

Still, ask me what the best bbq sauce in the world is, and I'm going to have to tell you that I don't sell it.

I would if I could...

Bad Daddy, woncha please come home.

House O' Joy

2005-09-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in nearly a month. Let me take the easy way out and claim that for the better part of three weeks I was simply in a state of shock. I'd never lost a city before, a place in which I'd invested so much memory.

Years ago I lived off Esplanade, in the 7th Ward across Rampart Street and beyond the I-10, fifteen blocks from the Vieux Carre in a neighborhood that was never going to be gentified. There was a laundry across the street, and the House of Joy Liqour Store, a place with the best collection of pornographic playing cards I have ever seen. It was an old house with a pecan tree in the yard, and the children next door, barefoot mostly, with corned-rowed hair would sit on the stoop and crack nuts between their teeth before going off to the levee to check their crab traps. A old woman named Desiree Lefevre lived upstairs. Once a week I would walk the rent on her television set to place downtown and when I came home she would feed me red beans and dirty rice and tell me about her mother, who had been a fine whore whom all the white men loved.

I remember how in winter the blue flames from the little cast iron gas heater threw shadows across the tall ceiling of my bedroom and how I would watch my girlfriend by the light of the fire as she slept in our bed.
My ex-wife and I were headed for Louisiana once. Or so we told ourselves before the street life dragged us down again.
In the 90's I spent a long summer in a writing program in Seattle. Thereafter, the deal was, I was bayou bound.
I was delayed, landing here in California again instead.
Twelve years is nothing in New Orleans.
It never occurred to me that the city itself might run out of time.

Hurt Your Friends Sauces

2005-08-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, a long stay at the County Fair dishing out dollops of Dave' s Insanity Sauce to teenaged boys and now its back to work at casa de salsa a.k.a Slow Burn. The two most common questions in any shop selling hundreds of pepper sauces are: Do you have a restroom? (The most common question in any retail store...) And...(drum roll...) What's your hottest hot sauce?

The hottest hot sauce question has plagued the chile sauce business for as long as there has been a chile sauce business. How do you answer that question? Shut up and go away! Or, do you mean legitimate hot sauce or food additive? I mostly ask, with flavor, or to hurt somebody? In my opinion that simplifies things.

Read my lips: I don't care how much ginseng you add, no sauce on the planet Earth using capsaicin chile extract to achieve unnatural heat levels will ever have the great flavors associated with whole pepper heat. None. That's not say that there aren't a few flavorful extreme sauces. Marie Sharp makes a carrot hab extract sauce called Beware that's still flavorful, as is Blair's Possible Side Effects. But neither is as flavorful as a puree of habaneros (about as hot as you can get without extracts.) That's okay, because in truth most of the people asking about extreme heat are out to hurt their friends. After that its just a matter of how much they want to hurt them. Ashley's Mad Dog 357 is the old stand bye. In the world of serious pain the Insanity sauces are mostly been there, done that, as are the entry level sauces in Old Juan's Da Bomb line. 357 however still stops most of us in our tracks. But of course you can go hotter still, just remember that paybacks are a bitch. MegaDeath is unpleasant enough to send some folks running back to Texas Pete's for life. CAJohn's can hurt you plenty with Hard Times, or Z, and damned near kill you with Frostbite. Chet at Tijuana Flats should open his own Doc In A Box to treat victims of Smack My Ass And Call Me Sally. Still, when all is said and what you're seeking is revenge, and at a million scovies with a base that will stick to the tongue and cause agony qualifying as full fledged torture and a violation of human rights, Mad Dog's Revenge remains the gold standard.

Have you ever tried this stuff? Most people ask me as I bubble wrap the bottle. "No, but my friends have," I tell them. And that's why I never turn my back on any of them. Someday, somehow, they're gonna get even.

Is Pain Good?

2005-08-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Old Juan's in that hotbed of chili-culture Kansas manufactures a well known line of pepper sauces called Pain Is Good. We sell a lot of them, and Batch #114, the jerk style sauce is pretty good. The question arises, is pain really good? Well sure, pepper sauce inflicted, endorphine pumpin', tongue-tingling suffering is mighty-fine. On the other hand, "I just unloaded a hundred cases of hot sauce off the back of a truck" lower back pain leaves something to be desired. Nobody ever tells you when you open a small retail business taht you're going to be dog-tired for years on end. Your friends down at the Ford plant get a couple weeks of paid vacation, but as a small retail you feel guilty closing for Christmas. What if somebody really, really needs a bottle of Dave's Ultimate Insanity? Your children grow older and go off to college. The cat moves in with the neighbors. Then just as you are about to dispair, reckoning that all for naught -- CAJohn's starts selling a pepper extract sauce called Magma that mimics a lava lamp when you shake the bottle. If that isn't a justification for all the long hours, nothing is.
Thusly; rock on.

Scotch Bonnet -- single malt?

2005-08-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay -- I don't care what your "How Hot Is My Chili" posters says, even if I sold it to you. Genetically the Scotch Bonnet pepper, and the garden variety Habanero are the same thing. Sure, there are variations in flavor and heat between Habs grown here, and Habs grown there, but peppers, like grapes, are captives to their micro climate and terrior. The infinite superiority of the Scotch Bonnet reflects the cultures from which it springs, not its cultivation. To wit:

Habanero -- Ranchero Music
Scotch Bonnet -- Reggea

Habanero -- Tabasco Habanero
Scotch Bonnet -- Susie's Original (Antigua)

Habanero -- Safeway Produce Aisle
Scotch Bonnet -- Any street market in Kingston

The Scotch Bonnet gives us authentic jerk, while the Hab is the base for dozens of virtually identical "spicey" BBQ sauces.

Bonnets rule, Habs drool. (Well, at least for the sake of this conversation.) I call it tequila logic. Give me enough Cuervo and I'll eat a plate of Habs. Give me a Red Stripe, or a tumbler of malt whisky and I'd rather have the Bonnets.

Either way I'll pay for it in the morning.

The thing about hot sauce

2005-08-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

The thing about hot sauce is that for well over a hundred years we have lived in a Tabasco Culture. Pepper Sauce, and Tabasco Brand were almost synonyms. Tabasco owned the American market for pepper sauce like Microsoft Windows owns the market for commercial end user operating systems. Doesn't mean Tabasco was the only pepper sauce, or the best pepper sauce, it means that Tabasco was the sauce that everybody knew. I don't sell Tabasco. I don't much like Tabasco. If I wanted flavored vinegar, I'd buy flavored vinegar. So here's what you need to know from the jump -- great pepper sauces are like great wines. Rich, nuanced, complex and found in combinations as unlikely as chocolate and habanero, or as simple as scotch bonnet and yellow mustard. Welcome to my world, where we can talk about these things while only rarely discussing the McIlhenny's of Avery Island.