Dawson’s x Iris Lune Eclipse Hot Sauce Review

Dawson’s x Iris Lune Eclipse

This may sound stupid, but every once in a while a sauce comes along that is so fantastic in just one aspect that it “breaks” my rating system. Ironically, this is one of the ways I can tell that it is sound because a sauce like this, that is near transcendent in execution and perhaps even in design, is not a sauce of the year candidate, even though it is probably the best-tasting sauce I will have all year and one which I enjoy immensely. It is because my rating system is incapable of truly encapsulating a sauce like this, is wholly inadequate to the task, that it confirms to me that I can stop debating if I should (or should have, rather, at this point, probably) add another dynamic for rating criteria.

Dawson’s seems to really like doing crossover sauces, as they also did one with the Heat Hot Sauce Shop (which I’ve reviewed elsewhere here), and also appear fairly regularly on The Hot Ones show, with entries in 5 seasons as of the time of this writing. While I liked some of their other sauces a good fair bit, it wasn’t really until this sauce that I was blown away by anything from them, but to say blown away is almost an understatement. This is one of the more well-crafted and executed sauces I’ve probably ever had and the design borders on genius. In many ways, this is a foodie’s hot sauce.

I rarely talk about color, unless it is something really striking, either positively or negatively, but I would be remiss not to talk about the color, as the gorgeous and lush nature of the sauce is reflected all the way down to the beautiful pastel yellow hue. It reminds me almost of a nice cream butter or perhaps even a honey butter and I’ve seen very few of those I haven’t liked. This also uses Vietnamese Red Chilis, which I’ve had a lot in pod form from dating a girl from Vietnam years ago, but don’t recall ever seeing in a sauce before. While this does mean generally low heat, they do work exceedingly well in this setting, with the garlic and peach.

Even though peach is the first ingredient, this is not hugely a peach-forward sauce. This is not to say that it doesn’t show up, but is more one of the flavors rather than the star. This is definitely a composite sauce, with the yellow peppers, as well as the aforementioned garlic, playing a substantive role, all on the silky base of the extra virgin olive oil. With fruit-based sweet-hots, which this is, though it is not particularly prominently sweet, I find they often work best when paired with specific foods and this is no exception. There is the additional element of the oil, which adds a richness to this that points it to working best at drier meats where one might want peach, such as chicken. It is actually quite fantastic there. I could also see this doing nicely on pork and if it’s around when grill season hits, will be trying it there as well, though not as a grill sauce, as it is nowhere sweet enough for that. Given its richness, as well as fruit-based sweet hots (which this is, mostly) by nature are lower in this, flexibility is a bit low, but I will say that I didn't dislike it on pizza, though I also would not say that is the right application.

Bottom line: This is a superb, stellar entry and not only the most impressive sauce I’ve had from Dawson’s, but I’d put in the upper 10% of all the sauces on this blog.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6