The Fontanka cuts through the heart of St. Petersburg, entering the Imperial capital from the northeast corner of the Baltic Sea and making its exit into the Neva at 59.94797 degrees latitude. When I was a student in Piter I went out of my way more than once to walk along its banks- in the evening, the faintly haunted facades of Baroque architecture would illuminate the surface of the river like a specter in a three piece suit. If Nevskii Prospekt captures the illusive heart of the city, the Fontaka reflects its worn, unreconstructable soul.

At the crossing of these paths is a highly conspicuous pizza parlor. Aside from the “Russian pizza” (imagine a family sized, open faced pot pie laced with mayonnaise and mozzarella) my host sister once made for supper, this restaurant’s humble pies were my only source of pizza during my stint in Piter. They were also the only food I ate in Russia to be served with anything remotely spicy. Skirting the gustatory instincts of most Russians, Pizza.ru armed each of their tables with small bottles of red and green Tabasco. A bold step in a bland world, this action earned my loyalty. I began stopping by more frequently, dousing my slices with the woefully underused sauces, washing my meal down with a cold Bochkarev or Amstel and stopping to stare at the Fontanka for a few seconds before walking back home along Nevskii.

My bond with Pizza.ru was certified when, one evening, I brought my holy bottle of Chohula to the table and began pouring its savory Mexican fire onto my first slice. Philippe, the ostensibly Indian waiter who usually took my order, was turning back to the counter when he glimpsed the bottle in my hand. He froze, eyes wide, and asked me where I had gotten the sauce. He picked up the glass vial, examining the label in a flash of scarcely contained glee. He disappeared into the kitchen “to show the chef” and returned two minutes later with the declaration: “This is very nice. First class!” When I left the country, the remainder of my Chohula stayed with Philippe. In a certain way you could say he was the only true friend I made as a foreigner on the Fontanka.

What is it about spicy food that instantly sows the seeds of fraternity among strangers? Philippe is but one of many waiters, cooks and cashiers whose eyes have glimmered when they realize that I want my food flavored at weapons grade. There’s a prideful recognition in ordering or serving things hot that’s missing from the standard palette of flavors. Just as the sensation of spice transcends its peers to become a more encompassing physical experience, the sensation of sharing spicy food transcends normal dining transactions to become a metaphysical experience.

Nowhere is this distinction more immediate than in the application of hot sauce. When my roommate ducked into midtown’s Green Leaf Gourmet on a lunch break last month, he realized that he hadn’t fulfilled his daily spice quotient. When he asked the man behind the counter for a bottle of Tabasco with his potato chips, he received what is possibly the best response to anything: “So, you like hot sauce? Want to try some real hot sauce?”

More than a bonding agent, Green Leaf’s home made pepper sauce, which sits unassumingly alongside less noble condiments behind the deli’s sneeze guards, is a wonder of flavor. Its consistency lies somewhere between a straight hot sauce and a tomatillo salsa. Its content starts with a sweet vinegar and includes scotch bonnet peppers, garlic, salt pepper, and any number of other indecipherable ingredients- after attempting several times to deconstruct the recipe I’m convinced that some combination of mango and carrot is involved, but I don’t have the palate to be sure.

A taste of the sauce starts with a ringing shot of tang that lands somewhere between citrus and vinegar. The savory flavors of salt, pepper and garlic quickly follow, riding an undercurrent of spice that quickly invades the tongue and begins burning its way through all of its taste buds. A slightly sweet and sour finish barely masks the fact that the peppers in the sauce are still battering your sensory defenses, causing you to sweat long after this bite has ended. The entire experience is a feast for the senses: Hot sauce is regularly this powerful, but rarely this sophisticated.

The steam tray lunch options at Green Leaf, a mostly mediocre offering of curries and stews over rice, are nowhere near the pepper sauce in terms of quality. When you’re faced with a condiment this magnetic, though, the food it’s on can quickly become irrelevant. The magic of any great hot sauce is the intangible dimension it creates in whatever it adorns; in this sense Green Leaf’s pepper sauce is like a skeleton key to the possibilities of flavor. Every splash I pour onto my yellow curry chicken sets my mind to work on pairings with other Midtown eats, darting from corner to corner and imagining what Jamaican patties, empanadas, halal gyros and Israeli falafel would taste like when courted by Green Leaf Gourmet’s fiery graces.

Mostly, though, I just want to keep shoveling hot sauce drenched forkfuls of food into my mouth until my senses shut down and my face is glowing with exhaustion. This is a moment of pure flavor, the communion of piquancy that connects hot sauce proselytes from Nevskii Prospekt to Park Avenue.

Green Leaf Gourmet
7 Park Ave.
New York, NY 10036

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 1:19 am and is filed under Manhattan, New York.