Sendy Original Hot Sauce Review

Sendy Original

It’s always a little thrill when I happen to stumble across a sauce when I least expect it. Usually this will be on a grocery store shelf, like it was here, of a store I had not visited at all in this year and just happened to be near and looking for something else entirely. But, as is my wont, I always like to wander the store, see what’s new, what else is there and so on, and always, but always, check the condiment section, generally to see what might be on offer for hot sauce. Most of the time is it the usual mass market stuff that we’re all well familiar with, but lately, one of the local chains has made a push, as they do every few years or so, to getting more regional products on the shelf. Given that Colorado seems to have a significant number of hot sauce companies, it is not surprise that many of them, like this, wind up originating from there.

This is a good example of what I’ve mentioned before, that many hot sauces can benefit tremendously from the addition of tomatoes. Here, we have 4 different pods (and black pepper), namely Serrano, Jalapeno, Habanero, and Cayenne, though that last one doesn’t really show up in the mix too much as the first two do, which carry most of the flavor. This is a very nice, pepper forward flavor, with the tomatos adding a nice density and richness to the flavor. The first ingredient is vinegar and, depending on what I have this on, it sometimes will strike me that I would find it more favorable were that aspect dialed down a bit. It is quite a wonderfully flavorful sauce, however, more than making up for the abject goofiness of the name.

“Sendy,” much like the sauce name in the prior review, is an appeal to pushing it all the way over or full tilt or maximum effort or giving it your all, etc. etc. Unlike the cool callback to Star Trek TOS, however, this one is...ummm...decidedly not that, but is kind of awkwardly silly. I hope they revise the label copy, as this sauce deserves better. 

Given the sort of ubiquitous nature of the flavoring, this is a highly flexible sauce. It is not, however, particularly hot. That would be my second complaint, in addition to the slight over-astringency here and there. There is precious little heat there, for all those 4 pods. There is a hotter version, called Full Send, that I will be absolutely on the hunt for, as it would fix at least one of my issues with the sauce, but perhaps they were going more for general accessibility here.

Bottom line: Kind of a silly name, but don’t be deterred from what is a quite tasty robust and pepper forward sauce, albeit one with little to no heat. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6