An Open Letter to Hot Sauce Manufacturers

What I'm about to write was prompted by a discussion in the comment section of a review Scott Roberts recently did for a sauce called Johny 5 by Threatcon Kitchens, available here: http://www.scottrobertsweb.com/Review-Johny-5-Hot-Sauce-from-Threatcon-Kitchens#comments

Reading through the review, Roberts ultimately didn't enjoy the sauce and like others of which he's had an identical reaction, he said so. So far, so good, right? Except here's where it get stupid...

In his first post in the comment section, one Chris Tice, creator of the sauce, took great umbrage at the review Mr. Roberts did of the Johny 5 sauce, the first to be released commercially from Threatcon Kitchens. Part of his grievance centered on having to wait months for the review, despite Roberts repeatedly posting that he has an enormous backlog of review items. Given the amount of effort put into any given Roberts review (amusingly, one of Tice's gripes was that Roberts did not post a photo of every single thing the sauce was used on), along with his children and other more important elements that demand his time, he clearly is not in a position to churn them out, like these text-only posts I do. Even with my own, it still takes time to test the sauce and line out where it falls in the scheme of things, because the obligation to readers is one any good reviewer takes seriously. Roberts is also, far and away, the king of the hot sauce blog world, unquestionably. That doesn't make him always right or even someone that I necessarily agree with on all things a significant portion of the time, but that's why a manufacturer would want his review. To get into that rarefied air, there are conditions that come with the territory. A review on his site will potentially expose a product to a greater segment of the hotter sauce buying base, the exact customer demographic that a sauce such as this would appeal. Obviously, other companies recognize this, which is why he has boxes and boxes of stuff unopened before him. If someone wants him, he's not exactly invisible and trade shows and there are plenty of pages on his site for them to research so they know what they are getting. Failing to do this is on them.

Scott Roberts does not know me and does not need me to defend him, but there are some larger issues raised by the comments of Tice that have a more direct bearing. Tice, for instance, attempted to take Roberts to task for trying the sauce on pizza and "bar food". In the comments section, he levied this attack repeatedly, insisting that not only does sauce not belong on Italian foods at all, restricting any addition to the dried and dessicated hot pepper flakes and seeds, but further that reviewers should pair hot sauce to its pallet [sic] when testing. He also was angered that his "gourmet" sauce was used on Hamburger Helper. Finally, there were numerous misspellings in Tice's angry posts, yet he bandied his stature as some sort of published food writer for a couple papers in Florida as a means in his attempt to belittle Roberts further.

Almost all of Tice's behavior is laughable but his irate sentences about not pairing a sauce to its palate is absurd. Even if the label says the sauce is strictly intended for certain foods under the full pale moonlight after turning three time widdershins and even if the manufacturer gets some kind of commitment (somehow) that the food will only be used according to those directions, the fact remains that all bets are off once it is in the hands of the reviewer (or consumer). A good review will state how something is tested. Roberts did that. Nothing further is necessary. Readers can decide for themselves if it is fair and applicable and if Tice didn't believe it was and felt strongly about it, all he had to say was that the sauce would be better oriented to other things and leave it at that. That he chose to use the comment section as a sort of electronic assault is crass.

The sauce, as a condiment or accompaniment to food, comes to us, not the other way around. It either fits in with what we're doing and what we're eating or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it fails. There's nothing wrong with using sauce on pizza. Pizza is fine as a staple as is Hamburger Helper or mac & cheese or chicken strips. If any of the chilehead households have young children, dollars to doughnuts some of those foods will be staples, so of course the food at hand is where the sauce will be tested and it will pass or fail on its relative merits thereof. Pizza, it also should be noted, is one of the easiest tests there is for a sauce and one of the things I use as a base. If a sauce fails there, it typically points to a larger issue with the sauce in general. Very few sauces I can think of have failed this test or that of ramen noodles, which was my baseline test years and years ago. Sauces, if they are any good, should be able to fail this easy test and even the more specific Asian-oriented one have done so easily in the past. Even though I felt I had a handle on the Jim Beam Hot Sauce well enough to review it, as long as I have some in the bottle, unless a sauce is so awful I have to toss it, I will continue to test it on a variety of things, such as mole' chicken last night and Italian meatloaf tonight. I even ran it on a BLT(-L) sandwich while I was at it and have a couple more tests this week to continue checking and confirm things. Ultimately, the whole point of doing a food-based review is so that someone else can read your experience and determine if they have similar tastes and if they would use the product in a similar manner. That's why people read reviews, to help them answer the question "should I spend money on this thing" and maybe to be entertained in the process. Theoretically, assuming Tice is a competent reviewer (I have not and will not read any of his articles), he should know this already.

As a reviewer, I really want a sauce to have flexibility because I will not ever stock 50 - 100 sauces for every thing I might ever cook or eat. I believe everyone else reading the reviews probably wants the same thing. Just give us something good that we can (or do) love on a variety of foods and you'll have a repeat customer, we'll have a new staple and it's a win-win. For Tice to suggest that food be bought specifically for a sauce review is ridiculous and frankly asinine and demonstrates a core lack of understanding for the marketplace. The only way I could conceivably see that happening is if Tice paid for the food to be used during the review, but even then, it would probably be tested on other stuff as well because we want to know. Why be afraid of a sauce being used on a variety of foods? If the sauce is really great, possibly food would be purchased specifically for it, but probably 99.9% of the time that would be the exception and not the rule. 

Here's the rub, though. Johny 5 is not a sauce I would have ever considered, due to my intolerance of the onions in it, but if the day comes when Threatcon makes a sauce without that component, I won't be tasting it. When I saw that reaction from Tice, my first counter-reaction was that there was a sauce company who would never get my money, who I would make it a point to ignore and if ever I was asked, would intentionally steer people away from. It doesn't matter how good the sauce is; it could be the greatest sauce in the world and I would still say no because that sort of bizarre reaction from Tice I find highly offensive, as well as off-base and I have no intention of even indirectly supporting it. Fact is, I will never spend a cent on anything from Threatcon because of this and I will encourage others not to buy anything from them either. There are too many other good and great sauces from good and great companies and much more deserving sauce creators to support.

I've reviewed products for years and years, everything from CDs to bodybuilding products. I've known a great number of reviewers in that time and I will state categorically that of all the other reviewers I've known, as well as speaking for myself, we truly want to love what we're reviewing. We all want to find the next great thing, to find something that will help us to the next level of training or will be another addition to the list of "Island" CDs or to find the sauce that will ratchet up the taste factor of our food. Nobody sets out wanting to write a "bad" review, to tell someone that their product is not ready for prime time yet or needs more development or should have been erased from the studios hard drive, yet sometimes, in order to do our jobs as reviewers, whether we are paid or not -- from a pride perspective, if nothing else -- we must tell the truth. Not every product is great. Most are not even good. The highest single statistical area is that of average. The really bad ones are as few as the really great ones and the notably below-average about the same as notable above-average. In any field, the most competitive area is in the middle, but with an industry relatively in its infancy, such as hot sauce, it becomes very important to try to gain and latch onto a paying fan/customer base. Treating a neutral reviewer that badly and generally acting an ass to the other commenters in the community is not the way to go about doing that. Indeed, this is the epitome of what not to do.