With face pressed against the glass door, I peered at the rows of 3 oz. bottles like a kid outside a candy store. I’d been driving down Adams Ave. when I saw the words, “Hot Sauces and More,” and I pulled over, only to be foiled again by the dreaded “Closed-on-Mondays” sign. The spot was California-Antilles Trading, a small boutique in Normal Heights whose selection of novelty condiments tugged at the sentimental strings of my stomach. Hot sauces, BBQ rubs, salsas and pepper-flavored oddities with badly punning product names filled every shelf surface, and biker tee-shirts featuring wrinkled habaneros hung from the ceiling like stuffed animals at a carnival game, ready to be won by champions.

When the proprietor of California-Antilles Trading suddenly came around the corner, I peeled myself away from the glass and mustered my manliest nod, trying to act natural. The bearded man was on the smaller side, but he had the swagger of a man with life experience. He took one look at me, spotted the puppydog eyes underneath my Clint Eastwood impression and invited me into the locked store. I thanked him, he nodded, and we shared the unspoken bond of men acknowledging their shared respect toward bottled hot peppers, salt and vinegar.

A few years ago, at a generic fried chicken joint in downtown Chicago, a server asked me, “Do you want hot sauce?” Being a fan (and a man), I nodded. Then I stared in disbelief as the server dipped a soup-ladle into a bucket of Crystal and literally drowned my two-piece meal in glowing red-orange, leaving me unsure how to pick up my finger food. Then, as fumes of spicy vinegar infiltrated my lungs like mustard gas, I ate my two-piece meal, quietly bussed my tray, tossed the fifteen used napkins and walked proudly out the door. Take that, toothpick sample of Dave’s Insanity Sauce Private Reserve and other not-so-proud moments in my hot sauce history.

Okay, so I don’t have the highest tolerance for hot peppers, but I love their sauces, and I’ve appreciated the trials of eating them. I think most hot sauce fans can burn hours reading ingredient lists at a store like California-Antilles Trading, looking for interesting flavor twists or rejoicing at record-breaking Scoville units like they were horsepower readings of the latest Ferrari. Some of us are looking for challenges, some of us are merely curious, and some of us are itching for that next capsaicin endorphin high. In the end, we all bury a variety of spicy condiments in the elephant’s graveyard that is the refrigerator door.

I asked the owner – whom I would later discover to be Dr. Richard E. Gardner, “Ph.D., noted world traveler, anthropologist, and culinary gourmet” – about one sauce that California-Antilles Trading displays more prominently than the others. In response, he leaned underneath his desk and pulled out a yellowing copy of the Los Angeles Times from 1994. Pictures of hot sauces spanned the cover of the Food Section. I watched his finger smooth out the crumbling, taped-together page until he came to the bottom image, a line-up of five hot sauce bottles.

Charles Perry, the author of this article, had chosen these five as his favorites at a Pasadena taste test. The owner’s finger continued to move until it settled on the bottle of West Indies Creole Hot Pepper Sauce, which ranked in the fortunate five alongside Dave’s Insanity Sauce and Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce (a favorite of mine).

“We didn’t let it go to our heads,” the owner assured me, beaming with pride as the Dominican sauce’s exclusive distributor. By the time he showed me Perry’s description of West Indies Creole Hot Pepper Sauce – “Elegant and versatile, a habanero-based equivalent of Tabasco” – I’d already been won over. I bought the 10 oz. bottle for five dollars (I was told that the 3 oz. bottle was too filtered) and tried it with my dinner that night.

Neither Southern-style nor Mexican-style, I would consider West Indies Creole Hot Pepper Sauce to be a marriage of the two. Less salty than jalapeno Tabasco and less vinegary than original Tabasco, the sauce benefits from a high pulp content, leaving it as thick as Cholula yet relatively translucent. Like the flavorful El Yucateco, the sauce is habanero-based, but its use of papaya, a fruit that is neither too sour nor too sweet, allows the habanero’s taste to shine through without its full Scoville potential eating away at the tongue. While the sauce is a little on the spicy side, its delicious flavor has made it a quick favorite of mine, a less astringent alternative to using Tabasco for everything. It has earned a place of honor in the front row of my refrigerator door.

California-Antilles Trading
3735 Adams Ave
San Diego, CA 92116
619.283.4834

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 1:06 am and is filed under San Diego.