Circa 09.27.12
Well, not actually, in the lake, per se, but in the area, specifically in the city proper. There are, precisely, two and another about an hour away. Before I get to talking about them, I should back up. Long, long ago, back when I was first doing the Chilehead ride before the thing had a proper name, there were two places in Salt Lake that pushed the heat end. One of them was Grove Market and the other was a shop in Fashion Place Mall where we'd buy a bottle of Dave's Insanity every 6 months or so for drunken party bravery challenges.
The place in Fashion Place, whatever the name, is now long gone, but Grove Market is still around, doing their damn thing. Mostly, that means making gigantic (and tasty) deli sandwiches. They also have a couple floor to ceiling shelves (and an area behind the register) featuring nothing but hot to superhot sauces. Some of them are probably more keepsakes, such as John McCain campaign bottle of something and possibly that bottle of Orange Krush I got a couple weeks ago, than actually usable, but the range is overall pretty good, even discounting the bullshit like Melinda's and Marie Sharp's and other assorted sauces that use the dreaded ass-onions as part of their makeup. I've decided to make this my go-to store, for a variety of reasons and have put in some tags for the Original Death and a couple others to pick up sometime in the next month (backlog and all). They even have Danny Cash stuff, which I frankly never expected to see on a shelf. One major caveat, to go back to the keepsake thing for a second, is that anything on the very top shelf of the north shelf must be inspected closely. Several of the bottles are apparently just for collectible purposes and several of them have discolored sauce remnants up the necks of the bottles.
By way of update to Grove's, as of today, 11/03/12, I've bought 6 bottles of hot sauce there. Three of them have been out of date and the sauce has been discolored. Accordingly, I must recommend that you check the date and color carefully before making an actual purchase.
The other Satl Lake store is called Chili & Max and is in the top area of the detestable outdoor Gateway Mall, down the street from the more useless outdoor City Creek Mall. In the age of the internet, for a brick & mortar anything to succeed, they need to do one of two things: offer something unique and that people really want and can only get there OR offer a great enough selection to offset the higher price for convenience vs. ordering whatever it is online for probably (maybe) cheaper and having to wait a week or so. What Chili & Max has done is neither. This is evidently an outlet for a sauce company unfortunately named "Its F'n Hot." Loads of that on the shelves, along with a few things from CaJohn's and Dave's, but the selection seems almost haphazard. There are a few of the superhots and the store, with its hundreds and hundreds of bottles, seems to run the gamut, but where is the Blair's and where is the rest of the CaJohn's? Again, with the Melinda's and Marie Sharp's, several of which are in grocery stores, but when you're putting a storefront in a mall, where patrons have to validate their fucking parking, your ass better bring it and this store was a resounding and solid disappointment. I may go back again someday, but damn if it's worth a special trip. I seriously can't see how you can cater to that narrow of an audience, most of the shoppers from there can be counted on to be knowledgeable, and then have that skimpy of a selection.
An hour north, in another mall and nestled in a Quilted Bear storefront (I couldn't make up something that delicious if I wanted), is a third, called Burn Your Tongue. Now, it's a waste of my time and money to drive to that town merely to peruse the wares on display, even if I buy something, but if I'm in the area, I'll definitely drop in. The selection they have listed on their website is intriguing and by names alone, world better than either of the two I already mentioned.
Grocers are carrying more sauces now. Smith's (part of Kroger), goes about as far as El Yucateco, but Harmon's carries several of the charged habanero sauces and Fresh Market has several more. Whole Foods is supposed to have a good selection (I couldn't find any on my last visit) and some of the more boutique stores also advertise their supposed prowess here. I can't canvass them all, obviously, but I always check the shelves for something recently added. A Trader Joe's is supposed to open downtown and that has some possibilities, but in a town this size -- and even including Ogden an hour north -- 3 shops that specialize (sorta) in hot sauce is piss poor pathetic. Salt Lake is not a "dead" food town-- there are a lot of great and flavorful eateries and we have the Kobe Sushi restaurant, with its infamous 7 levels of heat (working my way up to that one) -- it's not like it's Fargo, where nobody knows anything about food or flavor, after all. It is, somewhat, a "safe" town, though and the Chilehead movement, while gaining some ground, is not storming the castles here just yet...
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