Starting Slowly

In my early 20’s my journey kicked into high gear when I started working at a new neighborhood BBQ restaurant. The owner had been mulling over ideas for weekly specials, and considering we had excellent smoked wings (some of the best in the city in my opinion), a wing night was a clear choice. Being a BBQ restaurant we had a few regional orientated BBQ sauces and only one buffalo sauce for our wings, not exactly an exciting bevy of options, so the decision was made to come up with ten specialty sauces to feature on wing night. One of my co-workers and I took it upon ourselves to come up with as many sauces as we could, fueled by the spirit of competition and also the excitement of having some of our own creations on the menu. I don’t remember how many sauces we submitted, it was certainly more necessary, only one of each of ours was chosen. My sauce was a marriage of convenience, using the base of our already in-house Frank’s Buffalo Sauce bolstered by an unhealthy amount of roasted habaneros, garlic, and whichever peppers or spices were in the dry food storage.

My first sauce in hindsight was a decent effort; flavor-wise it was all over the place with no theme or meaningful balance. Despite this, it was incredibly popular almost immediately, which I can only attribute to our guests craving a much spicier sauce compared to our bland bottled buffalo sauce. Over time I began to view making hot sauce as a creative outlet and not just part of my prep work before my shifts. Striving for consistency and new flavors, I began to buy equipment to turn my home into a test kitchen, with varying degrees of success and a fair amount of pepper-spraying my apartment. My work did not go unnoticed however, our guests were consuming more sauce than I was able to produce. I would have to come in on my days off to prep batches to keep up with demand. Although the popularity of my sauce wasn’t shared by all. More than one of the few chefs we went through did not like the idea of a bartender having an item on the menu. At times I would have to sneak in the kitchen while Chef was gone, to prep hot sauce, store it in squeeze bottles, and hide them in our bar coolers. My regular guests would only be able to request the sauce from the bar, in hushed tones and away from the prying eyes of the kitchen.