Heat Hot Sauce Shop Hot Paper Lantern Roasted Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Heat Hot Sauce Shop Hot Paper Lantern Roasted Habanero & Garlic

This is the third iteration of what is kind of a signature sauce for Heat Hot Sauce Shop. I have reviewed both of the other two for this blog (check TOC on the right) and while I found them generally favorable, by the end of both of them, the apple cider vinegar was getting to me a bit. For this one, third time is perhaps the charm as the Paper Lantern Habaneros are quite a marvel. I’ve not had them before and have...well, I’d say more tolerated Habaneros over the years than actually liked them, excepting the Red Savinas, but these are very nice, bring way more of a fruity aspect and a very nice roundness to the flavor profile, almost a smoothness. Habaneros can frequently come across as what I would call abrasive a bit, but that is definitely not the case with these.

Here, we have a very nice base for the tanginess of the vinegar to play off of the brown sugar. Under this kind of backdrop, the peppers and roasted garlic comes across very well and make this the best version of this kind of sauce it can be. A lot of the verbiage from the other reviews still applies, as the sauces overall are more alike than not (I still find it slightly too sweet and wish a different vinegar entirely was used), but this is definitely my favorite variation of those three and by far the tastiest. Heat-wise, it sort of falls between them, as slightly hotter than the original version, but not as much as the Limited Edition from before. I’d almost call this a slightly more tamed version of Habaneros and am certainly glad I got this bottle when I did, as I’d not experienced the Paper Lanterns before and they were way more impressive here than expected. This is an impressively flavored pepper as the star here, not quite enough to change my mind about Habaneros overall, but definitely up there, in my estimation, with the Red Savinas.

Bottom line: This is by far the best (and probably most accessible) version of this sauce to get, if you’re curious and want to get one yourself before they’re gone.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5