2024 Q3 Update

2K24 Q3 Update

Hey, so remember before I was doing the FOH series and I used to just talk about whatever spicy fast food entrees I happened to have? We’re going to start off with a little throwback to those times. I went on a little road trip vacation in the early part of this quarter, July, to be specific, and I came across a Qdoba. Now, I was a bit miffed earlier in the year that I wasn’t going to get to try their Habanero-Lime steak, since I kinda sorta like the chain a bit and there is not any near me, but I availed myself of the presented opportunity and tried it out. I found it quite nice and now I’m kicking my dumb ass self for not dragging along a camera (and probably some lighting, since what was in the hotel was not great) and doing a review of it (I had the dish with Qdoba’s Diablo Queso, so I could have done them both). They also have a new Queso out called Apocalypto, so I’m going to add that to my list to do next year, whichever of them are still around...I won’t have my editing tower with me, but by all the lights, I will hopefully actually remember to bring the fucking camera with so I can do some on-the-road videos...maybe. Hopefully. It’s weird, I always talk myself out of it, even after running into the same goddamn thing when I road tripped to Albuquerque for the Fiery Fest in 2022...I mean, in case you were somehow wondering if I wasn’t an idiot, there you go.

Additionally, Burn Your Tongue, my absolute favorite hot sauce emporium, run by one of the truly greats of the industry, Roger Damptz, celebrated the 15th year anniversary when I was on the road, so a belated and hearty round of applause to him...AND, get this, not content with that, the very next month, added another location in Park City, to fill the void in that area Pepper Palace left when they bailed. Very seriously, until the Burn Your Tongue web store comes back, if you are within a 100 mile radius of any of the locations and care at all about this kind of thing, you owe it to yourself to visit one. It is a pilgrimage absolutely worth the drive and if you ever want to meet me IRL, I haunt those hallowed shelves from time to time. I also updated the Utah hot sauce spots list, which I was (again) woefully errant on doing.

Going back to the FOH videos for a moment, there is a major change that will be drifting in here and there, starting tomorrow. I’m mostly planned through the end of 2024 and I think I will wind up having a video up pretty much every Friday between now and the end of the year...more on why in the end of the year blog post in December, but actually, the streak is more like starting in mid-August through the end of the year. The Friday postings will also likely continue for a while into 2025 for...reasons, which will be outlined more in the Q4 update. I have a LOT of challenge stuff on deck, since I had so much fun with it last year, so look for that coming out in probably December and onward.

Finally, Season 25 of The Hot Ones came out in early September and it added exactly 2 sauces to my overall list. Update for that will be coming in the End Of The Year post at the end of Q4. As for this season, one of those sauces, the Dawson’s, seems very interesting. The other sees the return of Fresco, who made one of the more phenomenal sauces on the show, so cautiously optimistic there. This is another rather onion-heavy slate of sauces, though, and it does see the return of The Hot Ones Classic sauce to lead things off, which is one I’ve not ever found to be particularly impressive. It also does not change my streak of having both a written and video review up for at least one sauce in every season.

Redacted Honey Trap Hot Sauce Review

Redacted Honey Trap

I love some good cheek, a fair good bit of cheek, one might even say, and finding this, a sauce company out of Tampa, who has apparently decided to take spycraft as their motif, albeit by way of something more akin to perhaps the fine work of the late great Leslie Nielsen. The entire website is decked out in all this glory and apparently this is another newer company, one I was not aware of at all until taking in the magnificence of the newest BYT location. There I spotted it and was instantly hooked by the label design and sauce names.

So we here we have honey and one of the more undersung pods for me, the venerable Scotch Bonnet, which is a great base, to be sure. There are also some carrots and mangos in there to kind of round things out, but neither shows up particularly in the flavor profile. This is much more the Bonnet & honey show and I think the sauce is better for it. Here, for instance, on perhaps great display, is a very good example of the taste relation between the Bonnets and their more ubiquitous, but not as good, as far as I’m concerned, cousins, the Habanero.

A good hot sauce, a good sweet hot in particular, will always have a place in my fridge...at least for a while until I clear the bottle and this is another I had to put the brakes on, so as to have enough left to shoot a video for it. To say I enjoyed using it would be an understatement and this is a pretty ringing introduction for the company. I definitely will be checking through more of their sauces, but as for this one, this style of sauce works very well in places you might use honey, so fried foods, but I wound up throwing it around a bit more than that. It’s not quite sweet enough to be used in a dessert context, though I also tried that, but as long as where you want to put it would be good with honey, this is a winner.

Bottom line: A very strong entry from one of the newer companies on the horizon, definitely worth getting if you like honey-based sauces and want to get a feel for the Scotch Bonnet in comparison to the Habanero.  

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 9
           Flexibility: 7
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Merf's Her Majesty Hot Sauce Review

Merf's Her Majesty

Note: This sauce was provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram. 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRqf9ATQXJA

Very intriguing entry here and one I was not aware existed up until I had this hot little number in my hands...actually "hot" in terms of spicy might not be the right thing here, as this is a very moderate heat, given that the main (and only) driver is Serrano. I had high hopes that it would be another fruit-based sweet hot and I don't run across berries nearly as much as the tropical fruits, so I was pretty excited to see it. This one also featured a combination of strawberry, blueberry, and blackberry. I've definitely done a few sauces with the first two fruits, but can't say that the third one comes up a whole lot, so I was definitely very interested in checking this one out.

The sauce itself, though, definitely tends hard towards the tart. I wasn't sure what the need for lime juice was, as the sauce is definitely closer to sour than anything else, along with some salt notes, but this very clearly was not intended to be sweet. This naturally came as a disappointment to me, as I don't really enjoy sour sauces and think most fruit-based sauces benefit from being on the sweeter side.

Because of this, naturally, this made it a touch on the challenging side for me to find places it to pair it with. This is by no means a bad sauce or unpleasant tasting one, but moreso something not aligned with my palate, though I tried mightily, all the way from savory dishes to actual desserts. It didn't ruin anything or drag any dishes down, but neither did it really add or compliment most of them. It was just kind of a thing I added and was there, separate and distinct. Part of this was also me being a touch unclear where this sauce was aimed. 

Bottom line: If you like your fruit (and fruit sauces) a bit more on the tart side, this might be worth a go. For me, I didn't quite vibe with it, but found it be another sauce more interesting than outright tasty. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor:5

Overall: 4

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood Hot Sauce Review

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz at Burn Your Tongue, the greatest of hot sauce emporiums. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

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

This may be the most literal-named sauce I've come across. While the first ingredient maybe tomatillo, everything, from the smell on down to the flavor, is more dominantly that of the second, and for which this sauced is named. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, largely imagining a more run-of-the-mill tomatillo sauce, which tends to lend a bit towards tomatillo, of course, as well as a green chile like an Anaheim, maybe a bit of lime, and some cilantro, with just a touch of garlic and that's mostly where the ingredients here lead...other than no lime or green chiles...or cilantro. Instead, we have the much more prominent note of the smoke, followed by the green Habaneros.

I'm not quite sure what they intended for this sauce, but with most of those ingredients, I'm thinking it's a tomatillo sauce, which means Mexican style foods, like chimichangas or carnitas or enchiladas or perhaps a nice tamale, maybe a nice fish taco, or perhaps in a marinade potentially for some nice flank steak. In all of those things, I think this would be pretty wonderful, as those all have fairly strong and prominent flavors that this can bounce off of and play with, as well as temper the intensity of the smoke flavor a bit. By itself, it does come across very forcefully as maybe not one note exactly, but by far the majority of the flavor is in that. Also, like most Mexican style sauces, and particularly green sauces of that style, it does not tend to do well outside of that food format.

That said, I do like this sauce a lot and think it fits very well with the more complex dishes. The more there is something there to compliment this, the better, and indeed, it proves often a very nice and welcome addition. I don't typically eat a lot of green sauces, as a rule, so I don't come across these frequently, but the last time I remember one being this favorable was probably Danny Cash's Salvation Garlic-Serrano Sauce (reviewed elsewhere here) or maybe the El Yucateco green (also reviewed elsewhere here). Color is much better here than in the latter, though this one does come across with the flashy heat in a similar manner. It is mostly that, though, just a flash, as this is a fairly tame sauce overall.

Bottom line: A very smoke-forward sauce, with some very nice background notes of green Habanero and tomatillo, followed by a slight grace note of garlic, all with very moderate heat. Definitely plays well with others and in my mind, sort of requires complimentary stronger flavors for best results.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Brick & Mortar Hot Sauce Spots In Utah Update

Update 2024

I am seriously bad at doing this...I, once upon a when, had designs on doing this annually and now, with this post, is nearly the first time I've updated it since November 2020...naturally, things have changed a lot since then and I figured, with the newest location of Burn Your Tongue (celebrating 15 years in July 2024!) in Park City, which is an absolute showstopper (more on that forthcoming), now is a good time to re-up it.

Gone from last time are Pepper Palace in Park City, which is not really much of a loss, and both the Draper and Logan locations of Burn Your Tongue, which might not have been around in 2020. Also, FYE, various local grocery outlets, and World Market, have all done a bit of upgrading to their hot and spicy offerings. I try to keep tabs on all of that, either noting in the written reviews here on this very blog or, if it's not a hot sauce, doing an FOH video on it, which you can check out by following the links at right to my YouTube page. Additionally, all of these locations (as well as some others not in Utah) are covered on my Yelp page, which has a link, also at right. Finally, I also encourage you to check out the previous entries into this less than constantly attended Brick & Mortar series.

Now then, the list:

Burn Your Tongue - inside Quilted Bear - Newgate Mall, Ogden, UT

800+ sauces. I might not need to add anything else to this, actually. This selection is intense and covers every spectrum of hot sauce you might think of, including some mustards and syrups. If you combined ALL of the shelf offerings of everyone else on this list, you’d maybe hit 200 - 250, but not much more. All of them. Combined. Roger, in addition to being the ambassador to spiciness, particularly with his support of the chilehead community, is also an all-around good guy and if you happen to catch him there, you’ll be treated to a great conversation about peppers, the industry, and exactly which sauce you should be taking with you, and maybe even a discount. 

Burn Your Tongue - inside Locals - University Mall, Orem, UT

This one is a sort of truncated version of Ogden, with maybe half of the selection, 350 - 500 sauces or so, with a bunch of snacky stuff and different powdered mixes and popcorn, among other things. Even with the lower shelf space, this location is still more than all of the other non-BYT  spots combined and is super convenient. This is the location I haunt perhaps more than the others, so if you ever want to catch me in the wild, it will probably be here...or would have been, if not for the next entry.

Burn Your Tongue - inside Locals - Upper Level Outlets - Park City, UT

Has even more selection than the granddaddy location up in Ogden, with several sauces there that I did not see in Ogden, including an entire Hot Ones sauce section, including their entire branded line, by far the largest I've seen on anyone's shelves. As usual, there was quite a lot of stuff I hadn't heard of on the shelves and encountering the shelves for the first time, I was blown away, which is pretty hard to do for me, at this point. This is easily the biggest selection not only in Utah, but in at least a 500 mile radius, possibly more.

Grove Market - Salt Lake City, UT

This is what it sounds like, a small market servicing a deli counter that makes some of the tastiest sandwiches known to man. Everything there is in service to that, from the fresh desserts to the substantial drink selection to the snacks and so on. There is one neck-high shelving unit that is dedicated to the sauces, but in that area is probably a good 50 or 60 different types, some of which I’ve seen nowhere else. Selection here is a pretty far cry from any of the BYT locations, but still probably second most. It battles back and forth a bit with Pirate O's for that honor at various times, but both of those are more like semi-annual trips for me these days.

Pirate O's - Draper, UT

Speaking of, this is more of a Euro/quasi-Scandinavian import store than anything else. The owner seems somewhat of a chilehead, and is also another good guy that I’ve enjoyed chatting with about sauces, but a couple of shelving units along the back wall means he’s deferring to other stuff that probably sells better and is more profitable, though selection waxes and wanes a bit. Although the last few visits have yielded zero sauces for me to walk out with, since I've covered the entirety of the hot sauce area, with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions that are way more in the "rainy day" category,  I do enjoy the visits here a lot, just something warm and comfortable about it, that so-called je ne sais quoi.

While my overall favorite, and the place that by far gets the majority of my purchases, is Burn Your Tongue, I do have a soft spot for both Grove, for lunches and for being the OG hot sauce location, where I've spent many good hours in conversation with the owner there, as well as Pirate O's, just because there is so much cool stuff to see and even after multiple visits, I still find new stuff that wasn't there the time before. I appreciate that kind of relentlessness. To sum up, for the last major ones standing, three very different approaches, with BYT definitely covering the gamut of the "chilehead" experience, from chile-curious, all the way to hardcore firehead and with a constantly curated selection, often with sauces you can find nowhere else, including in online outlets, while Grove mianly offers some outstanding sandwiche, along with some of the bigger sauce maker names and novelty stuff, leaving Pirate O's, which I always find just an overall fascinating experience, with lots of imported delectables and sauces more in the direction as Grove.