Mexico Lindo XXXtra Hot Habanero
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYzSnHxUOZw
This is sort of fascinating as with this unassuming sauce, I somehow unexpectedly fell into a pretty deep rabbit hole. Mexico Lindo, in addition to being the namesake of several Mexican restaurants, is one of two hot sauce brands (the other is Amor) produced by CordialSA, who is a massive conglomerate of various food companies and dispensaries, including Dollar General. Think on a level like Kraft and you get an idea of the scale. I knew none of this prior to picking up the sauce, as the prior two sauces, both Habanero, which are reviewed elsewhere here, I didn't think a whole lot of, and both of which I had picked up while wandering around in Wal-Mart one day. To me, I figured it was just another hot sauce company from Mexico in competition mostly with El Yucateco and their approach to sauces...but it is way, way more than that, clearly.
I found out all of the above because I, as I usually do prior to writing up one of these, tried to spin over to the sauce company website to check out what information they might have there and couldn't find one. I had to go deep into the Amazon Q & A section for the sauce (I purchased this particular one on Amazon when I needed to get a few more bucks in for free shipping) to find the parent company of the sauce responding to the queries. This oddness is also leading me to see different outlets posting alternate SHU numbers, either 82K or 83200K, which is up there for any Mexican-style sauce.
Anyway, that bit of extraneous detail aside, this sauce sort of reminded me of the ghastly El Yucateco Black Label Reserve, also reviewed elsewhere here, except here the approach is radically different. In effect, this sauce goes a long way towards showing what a sauce of that type could be. Dispensing with the sour ashes direction that El Yucateco chose (don't get me wrong; I love El Yucateco as a company and think their prominence in the chilehead world is richly deserved), instead here we have a lowering of the citrus and using more smoked Habaneros instead of fire-roasted ones. Fire-roasting can be a mixed bag; if done right, it is magnificent, but if done wrong, you're eating ash. Here, we have two different types of peppers and additional spices to round out the flavor a bit more and it's near magical.
While this is not as tasty as my own custom blend of Mexican-style sauces (see FOH video for more on that, which is also why I rarely look to these sauces any longer), it is probably the best Mexican-style sauce outside of that concoction I've had in recent years. The heat level is quite nice, comparatively, giving a pretty robust charge to what is usually a pretty tame category. Flavor-wise, this is definitely Habanero forward, but tempered by both the citric acid and vinegar components, although those sometimes can be a bit overpowering. It flows smoothly and is also quite visually appealing. There are perhaps a bit more preservatives than I usually favor, but I understand what the company and sauce is trying to do and I'll give it a pass. Usage-wise, given the more astringent components, it is far better on lighter colored meats, eggs, and beans than it is on something with red meat, such as beef tacos, but it is flexible enough to work there. The spices move it away from what I would usually want in a dipping sauce, but the flavor is solid enough that I think you could work it there in a pinch, same also with stuff like spicing up ramen.
Bottom line: One of the better entries, commercial or otherwise, in the Mexican-style sauce category. The heat is probably pushing hard at the comfort zone of most "normies," but shouldn't challenge chileheads, who will be richly rewarded with very solid flavor by picking up a bottle of this.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 2
Flavor: 7
Flexibility: 6
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 6
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