Tennessee Pineapple Habanero
I have written the beginning to this review many, many times in my head, from starting by noting that the company, Tennessee Hot Sauce, has one of the best, if not the best outright, web sites in the entire industry, full of wonderful anecdotes and more importantly, pairings, and is a treat to visit. It is clearly a labor of love and the passion shows through quite considerably. That, along with their spirit of innovation and experimentalism, I quite admire. After my gushing about the website, of course, I would follow that up by observing that if I'm spending a lot of a hot sauce review talking about something peripheral, that's probably not a good sign, sort of like saying that the buns were the best part of a burger. I debated going a silly route, such as "down yonder in Tennessee country, the pineapple is a little different round these parts," and carrying on from there. I then considered returning to something I've said many times, which is that if you're going to do an established style of sauce, you have basically two choices: either do what is already out there, only better or go in a more radically different style and hope for the best.
In some respects, I think they decided to try to straddle those lines, although I think it leans more towards the latter. Here we have a number of things somewhat unusual to a pineapple-Habanero sauce, such as lime and more notably, cinnamon. The interplay with the three main flavors of pineapple, garlic, and cinnamon is a sort of novel one, but that last ingredient is one I only like as an accent, as in very small doses, and the impression of this sauce overall is tied inextricably and quite strongly to that one ingredient. If you're a fan of cinnamon, you'll at least be more receptive to this sauce, assuming also you like pineapple. If you're like me, where a little goes a long way, it will often prove distracting. When the cinnamon doesn't show up as strongly, it's a quite decent sauce and unquestionably I think it would be better without it. I found myself when using it frequently wishing that that note was not there.
Strong flavors can tend to towards polarization and while it's not necessarily to that extreme, it does cut down on the flexibility. Pineapple-Habanero is a sauce that can go quite a few places and work amazingly well, but adding in cinnamon means now that you have to find a food that will work with that. Most of the foods we relate to cinnamon are sweet, dessert-y type things, but this sauce, while certainly having a degree of inherent sweetness, is not one I would call particularly sweet. The garlic shows up in equal measure, which means that desserts, quite tidily, won't go together here. So, too, won't burgers or pizza or fish tacos or a few others things where I'd normally bust out a more straightforward pineapple-Habanero. I find it works acceptably on chicken tendies or roast meats, where the cinnamon doesn't need to mesh with other flavors. I stop short of saying it's a bad sauce, more that it doesn't resonate super well with my palate. Heat-wise, with Habanero being the only driver, this is definitely more on the tamer side.
Bottom line: While I can appreciate a newer spin on an established classic, there is always the danger of veering off-track and that, for me, is what happened here.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 5
Flexibility: 2
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4
Overall: 3
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