Hell's Kitchen Pepper Pastry
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIrn-VoXQWI
If you've been following along with my reviews, you already know I was getting really close to writing this company off entirely. I did a review of one of their sauces in 2020 (see TOC at right), another in 2021 and was suitably unimpressed enough to not re-add any of their lineup back to my list. Cue the Black Friday sales of 2022, and I came across a couple that struck me as interesting (and right-priced) enough to take another shot at. One of those was the Black Forest and the other was this.
Happily, though it took a while (4th time's the charm?), I've found a sauce I like quite a bit from them. This is not to say it's perfect, indeed, the very watery nature of it is something I found to be quite a struggle. This also diminished somewhat the flexibility of the sauce, which would have not been the case had it been thicker and slightly more concentrated in certain flavors. What is there is quite good and handles the neat trick of utilizing its kitchen sink approach to ingredients to give out different aspects, depending on what it's used on. This enhances the utility quite a bit and had it been less watery (this probably needs a restrictor cap, but the bottle does not come with one), this would be elevated quite a lot, as well as pouring and flowing better.
As it is, we kick off with Fatalii, a new-ish superhot I'm still pretty undecided about. The rather bitter and somewhat floral nature of it gives me definite pause, as it is quite reminiscent of the aspects of the Scorpion peppers that I find unfavorable. This followed by Habaneros and then water and I think the idea here was them diluting it down,with water, until they had the desired heat level concentration. There is a plethora of different fruits, blueberries, obviously, but also lemons, orange, and pineapple, though of those, the blueberries are the only ones that really show up as a flavor, albeit with a slight citrusy cast. Spices like garlic, salt, ginger, and cinnamon round things out, but the last two are lost in the rest of the flavors.
This is another that suggests ice cream, where it is quite good, and the runniness less of a bother, but it also indicates steak, pork, and chicken. Chicken strips work well here with the flavor and at least acceptably with the runniness, but steaks and porks...I'd be inclined to try to use this as a grill sauce, but there is no way. All that's going to do is make a mess. Same with pizza. If I see blueberry and maple, I'm going to be thinking breakfast food and while it's ok there, the watery nature works strongly against it, definitely in terms of flavor concentration. As far as desserts (pastry is in the name of the sauce, which, incidentally, makes zero sense), it definitely works well with sweeter fruits, particularly berries, as might be expected, but with more sour fruits, it's a definite miss. I did like it with sweeter breads, though, again, the runniness made a nuisance out of itself.
Heat-wise, if the bitter and slightly floral nature of the Fatalii didn't give it away before, there is no mistaking that there's a superhot at play. While it is toned down somewhat, it's still there and with the Habanero and the back end heat following behind, this can definitely get to a level that I think puts this into more of a chileheads only arena. I think it was toned down in heat for more broad appeal, but with Fatalii as the first ingredient, that's going to be pretty hard to make happen. Still, I think they came up with an end result that's good, but still need major adjustment, though here it's mainly just in the consistency side.
Bottom line: If you can get past the highly watery nature of this, you can find a rather intriguing flavor profile in this sauce, though it is definitely hot enough to be better reserved for chileheads.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 3
Flavor: 9
Flexibility: 6
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6
Overall: 6
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