City on Fire

Ten years ago, I wrote so many articles about chile peppers as the Food editor of The Austin Chronicle that Louis Black asked me to write about something else for a while. So I started sending my pepper articles to a funky little zine called Chile Pepper out in New Mexico. Last week, in one of those quasi-poignant circular life experiences that once caused Judy Collins to write quasi-poignant folk songs, I became the new editor of Chile Pepper Magazine.

In my first article for Chile Pepper in 1991, I called Austin the hot sauce capital of the world. San Antonio challenged that assertion, and that is how the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Contest was born. How did Austin win a hot sauce challenge against the hometown of Pace Picante Sauce? The truth is, we won because Austin had three times as many entries as San Antonio. In fact, we had so many entries that we didn't know what to do with all of them. What was intended to be a preliminary event, the Austin semifinals before the big contest with San Antonio, became the main attraction. People were calling from all over the state, from New Mexico, from California. Everybody wanted to enter this monster hot sauce contest they heard about in Austin.

In 1991, we knew that salsas were hot, if you'll forgive the pun, but we had no idea how hot they were about to become. Our hot sauce contest took off because the public was passionate about hot sauce and nowhere more so than in Austin, Texas. In the years that followed, we gave up on the intercity rivalry and opened the contest up to hot sauces from anywhere in the world. And soon we were told that we were running the world's largest hot sauce contest. Every year, more hot sauces were entered and more people attended. More restaurants came to show off their hot and spicy foods, more vendors set up shop to sell hot and spicy cookbooks, fresh peppers, hot sauces, and chile pepper memorabilia.

For the last two years, the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival, as it is now called, has been held in a grassy clearing in the middle of Waterloo Park, which runs along Red River between 12th and 15th streets. Along with the shade trees, another nice feature of the venue is free parking in the state parking garages along Trinity Street. This year, the festival grounds will open at 11am, an hour earlier than in the past. This is to allow early birds a chance to eat some breakfast tacos and drink a little coffee before the mercury gets into the triple digits. The music and beer will start flowing at noon and the winner will be announced around 5pm, as usual. Yes, we agree -- it is awfully hot. And it does seem odd that more than 10,000 people would venture out in the blazing heat of an August afternoon to listen to music, drink beer, and sample hot sauces. But that's why I have been calling Austin the hot sauce capital of the world for the last 10 years.

Chile Pepper Magazine is now located in Fort Worth. When I told the publishing group that just bought the magazine up in Cowtown that Austin was the hot sauce capital of the world, they looked at me strangely. "What about New Iberia, Louisiana?" they asked. "What about all the new hot sauce makers in Florida and North Carolina -- and what about Jamaica?" I shook my head wearily as I realized that I had a whole new bunch of nonbelievers on my hands. So I'm dragging the whole crew down here on Sunday to show them what the hot sauce capital of the world looks like in full swing. Please break them in gently; they aren't used to eating more than a couple dozen salsas at one sitting. I'm willing to bet that on Monday morning they'll be singing a different tune.