After several health department violations Stubb commented “what’s barbecue without a couple of rats?” Chased out of Lubbock before landing in Austin, Stubb protested that he “couldn’t fight the IRS with barbecue and sauce”. Stubb’s bottled sauces are generally tepid but his rubs are excellent. Please don’t confuse grilling with BBQ, it annoys the pig.
How this provincial little company in Maine got picked up by Trinidad’s largest privately held conglomerate (CL Financial) can only be guessed at. World Harbors puts out various “ethnic” sauce & marinade products whose main ingredients seem to be water and HFCS. CL Financial also owns Angostura Bitters and currently suffers from a huge liquidity crisis. Stiff drink, anyone?
Courtesy of Kraft, who else? Established market share in the eighties by sponsoring rodeos and other redneck events. Bull’s-Eye lost the Burger King account to Sweet Baby Ray’s, a much hipper sauce. “The Big, Bold Taste of Bull’s-Eye” sounds like a porn movie. Like Mexican salsas, you should really make your own.
A very good sauce from a mediocre chain owned by T.G.I. Friday’s. The names “Smith” and “Wollensky” were plucked randomnly from the NYC phone book, allegedly. Ads featuring professional golfer Craig “The Walrus” Stadler were made to create brand appeal and lure investors thereby inflating the stock price. Ironically, the legendary authentic Peter Luger Steak House sells its own inferior sauce while Keens doesn’t even bother. Medium rare please, of course.
This cult fave from Sheffield is not a relish at all but a vinegar based sauce that can be found in local fish and chips shops. The Yorkshire dialect is not slang and goes back to Old English. Sheffield is England’s musical ground zero and has produced countless bands of international stature. It’s all in the sauce, apparently.
Not to be confused with the cheaper “non-brewed condiment” vinegars popularized by killjoys back in temperance era England. Regardless of religion, fish and chips is a traditional Friday night meal throughout Britain. Bradford, Halifax and Keighly form the “Haddock Triangle”, cod is an increasingly rare find everywhere else. In a fit of Victorian branding the founder’s son renamed the product “Sarson’s Virgin Vinegar”, but it has since returned to a more humble label in a squeezeable brown bottle. Salt and vinegar, simply marvelous.
Allegedly went west in covered wagons and was loved by Honest Abe. Like many other condiment makers, Eugene R. Durkee started as a druggist and wound up in Brooklyn. Durkee got ahead of the competition by registering his trademarks, not common at the time. Durkee’s hexagon shaped chili sauce bottle is the holy grail for bottle collectors.
Made by Tropical Pepper Co. down in Costa Rica for the Caribbean market, look for the Toucan logo for other fine products. The scotch bonnet gets its name from the tam o’ shanter cap which itself was named for the subject and title of Robert Burns’ epic poem. Costa Rica has the highest Latin American ranking on the Life Satisfaction Index and plans to be the first carbon neutral country on Earth. Pura vida indeed.
A match made in Polish heaven. The Cracovia brand itself goes back to 1990 with the vacuum created by perestroika. They initially imported a lot of booze and currently wheel and deal throughout Eastern Europe as well as France and Canada. Philadelphia’s Polish mob is known as the Kielbasa Posse, NY’s Greenpoint Crew was taken down in 2006. Na zdrowie!
Barbados is known for its yellow, mustard based hot sauces. The Carribean’s scotch bonnet pepper is related to the habanero and has similar heat. No one knows exactly why the Portuguese named the island “the bearded ones” or why the Brits didn’t change the name later on. Lottie used to sell life insurance before starting the business in 1985. Flying fish with cou-cou is Barbados national dish and recently the island nearly went to war with Trinidad and Tobago over fishing rights… Ryszard Kapuscinski would have grinned.
