Tabasco Buffalo Hot Sauce Review

Tabasco Buffalo Style Hot Sauce

Note: This review has been edited as of 12/19/23 and is marked below accordingly.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVp-fGPDyas

While I applaud the Tabasco hot sauce company for what they've done for hot sauce in general, loosely, and more fervently applaud their attempts at innovation, I sometimes get the feeling they don't know what they're doing and are just resting on their considerable, though dated, laurels.

Case in point, this sauce. Buffalo sauce has been around a long while and while I feel it is mostly derived from the Cayenne-based Lousiana-style sauce, at least when it is best, it is a very well-established style. Those who do it well, do it well and everyone else takes a swinging pass at it, which is sometimes good and sometimes a salvo across the bow that is the exact kind of thing that could result in someone getting knocked out.

This one would be more towards the latter. Tabasco itself, we all know (and if you're me, mostly hate) and them stepping into this arena means a very harsh sort of loose Buffalo-flavored concoction with that sweetness associated with Tabasco peppers. Little to no heat to speak of, but a flavor that is best left unspeakable, actually. If I put a sauce down, such as I did with this, to reach for Original Tabasco, to me, it speaks that something is really wrong and this is a race to the gutter to find something as ill-conceived and delivered as this. Sure, you would be hard-pressed to do it, but could probably find something as dreadful, but this is not why we look to hot sauce. This is the kind of thing we avoid.

EDIT:  This sauce may have been re-formulated (and I say this because there is no Tabasco pepper in this sauce at all). In fact, I thought it was discontinued for a long time, but finally came across it recently and while I would say this is thicker than most Cayenne sauces and is closer to a Cajun sauce, or an upgraded version of Frank's. This is somewhat more pungent than other sauces of this type, slightly saltier, and a bit hotter, but I found the flavor kind of quickly becomes a bit one-note. Overall, I'd put it more to the middle or the upper middle of the pack.

Bottom line: One of the better sauces that Tabasco has made that, ironically, has no Tabasco pepper in it...which makes it, like the Tabasco Chipotle (reviewed elsewhere here), one of the better entries from the company where the Tabasco pepper flavor is entirely absent.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6