Dawson’s x Mike Jack Eats Heat Tropical Fury Hot Sauce Review

Dawson’s x Mike Jack Eats Heat Tropical Fury

Dawson’s continues their long line of collabs with one of the foremost names in competitive chilehead stuff, apparently not merely content to do League Of Fire challenges, but all the way to holding several Guinness Book records. Regardless of what you think of the Guinness Book generally, that is something very few people can lay claim to doing. I admittedly know little of him outside of that, being no more than casually familiar with his name, but in that respect, if his name and likeness are going to be on a sauce, as they are here and on two other sauces, assuredly, there is going to be some fire inside the bottle.

I don’t know how the other sauces rank in the scale of things, but here we have a combination of Habanero and Ghost, which is a pretty good combination in my book. I love Ghosties and with them, you tend to get an immediate superhot push and I think some flavor assistance with Habaneros, which can often take shape in a way I’m not always fond of. Here, the Ghosties are back a bit, but still manage to bring a decent fire, to the point where I suspect this will be right on the line for many normies, though I don’t expect any actual chileheads to be too challenged by it. Instead, I imagine most of them will be like me and find a nice satisfaction from the heat level.

Despite the sauce leading off with pineapple, the flavor is not overwhelmingly of that fruit and instead, it, along with the Habanero, lends more of a tropical by way of the Caribbean vibe to things. Using Habaneros as a flavor component can often backfire, but here it does very nicely, perhaps because the garlic adds a nice umami note to the proceedings. This does tend to be a somewhat bitter and astringent sauce, bordering, but not quite going all the way over into sour, so despite the fruit, it is not particularly a sweet hot. Like most Dawson’s sauces, there is the use of olive oil, so we have a nice smoothness and heft to things, with a texture I’d say is medium-thick. 

As with fruit-based sweet hots generally, flexibility is down a tad and here, it is down even moreso by dint of the bitter and astringent notes. This a very curious approach for a sauce, I find, but it is also one that I don’t think plays well with foods generally. I do think it does very nicely on fried foods and meld well with mayo in something like a sub sandwich, but in some of the other places I might be inclined to use it, such as on a pizza, I didn’t find the results pleasurable. 

Bottom line: A very aptly named sauce as the flavor profile is generally tropical and definitely, this does have a nice round punch as well. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4