Gary Elmore wasn’t planning to stay in Nashville long. He was on his way to Florida for a sous chef gig when his car broke down, so he stopped to get it fixed.
“In a few hours, I lost a transmission, but I found a job,” Elmore says. “That was 31 years ago.”
Elmore, the creator of Nashville-based Añejo Pepper Sauce, also didn’t set out to become a master saucemaker. His first gig here back in ’88 was cooking at Crawdaddy’s, which Elmore describes as the only waterfront restaurant on the Cumberland River at the time. It was down on Cowan Street before anyone wanted to go to Cowan Street, he says, near where Topgolf sits today. After that job, he spent decades in catering and often found himself reaching for something that wasn’t there.
“I needed something to cook with that wasn’t overpowering,” Elmore says. “The hot sauces on the market, as much as I love all of them, either disappear in a dish or they overwhelm it. I was looking for something that had umami and then heat.”
So he got to work, starting with fresh chiles, an open flame and stacks of hickory wood. Elmore kept things simple, using just four ingredients: chiles, salt, vinegar and garlic. No stabilizers to extend shelf life, no additives for color. He passed test batches over the fence to neighbors and dropped bottles at the doors of friends’ restaurants. Everytime he heard “too much salt” or “not enough acid,” back to the kitchen he went. After a while, he got it very, very right.
“It took 30 tries to finally hit the original red recipe that I use today,” says Elmore. “I went through a lot of fire and smoke to get there, and that became our signature. In fact, the people I sell my sauce to in New York call it ‘campfire sauce.’ But the smoke is subtle, and I think that’s why it can go on eggs and then pivot and go on pizza and then wind up in a high-end ramen noodle bowl. We’re going for flavor and umami first.”
Añejo Pepper Sauce
Elmore’s original red Añejo Pepper Sauce is thicker and darker than most on the market, and its rusty-mahogany color is your first clue that it’s going to taste different. Plummy sweetness, acid, minerality, smoke — Añejo has all of this, but it also has a restraint you won’t find in any “frat-boy sauce” (a spot-on descriptor Elmore uses that I’m absolutely stealing). You’ll find that same balance in his Verde Sauce: an army-green, pucker-inducing serrano condiment that’s irresistible on a sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuit. Finally, there’s the Habanero XX, a smouldering, orangey-red sauce that’s light, bright and fiery. That’s the sauce I tried back in 2016 at since-shuttered local spot The Hook that caused me to seek out Elmore online. He wasn’t in stores, but he took checks, and he delivered. The next day, all three sauces showed up at my door — and he kept on bringing them until they showed up on shelves. (His sauces are currently carried at Sky Blue Cafe and Bare Bones Butcher.) Over the years, it’s the nuance and versatility that have kept me coming back, even if I don’t know exactly what’s in the sauce I’m coming back for.
“There are two little things I do with these peppers that are contrary to what everyone else does that make all the difference,” he says, smiling. “I’m not telling anybody what that is, but I sure am glad you like it.”
Four More Local Sauces for Those Who Like It Hot
Green Door Gourmet hot sauces
A Little Bit of Everything
For variety, the best one-stop shop is Green Door Gourmet. The rainbow wall of condiments starts mild with a gorgeous Mango Garlic Hot Sauce that’s the color of preserved lemons. The strong roasted-garlic flavor and light sweetness of the mango make it perfect for Thai curry. One click up the heat scale is the Mango Habanero, a burnt-orange hot-sauce stunner that starts fruity (pineapple, mango) before settling in for a slow burn from habanero, cayenne and black pepper. (That one makes an epic habanero honey-mustard for chicken-finger dunking.) On the darker end of the spectrum, there’s the smoky Chipotle, whose tomato and peach notes make it ideal for drizzling on carnitas or barbecue nachos. At $4 a bottle, you could always just buy them all.
Music City Sauce's Sweet Heat
Sweet and Spicy
If you ever ate lunch at Little Mosko’s bakery, you know Sweet Heat by Music City Sauce. By the time owners Lauren Moskovitz and husband Alex Grainger took their baked-goods operation from retail to wholesale in 2018, people had dashed and drizzled the sauce on everything in sight.
“We served everything in those paper-lined boats, and people would make a well in the corner to dunk their sandwiches in it,” says Moskovitz. “People always taste it first on their finger and say, ‘Ooooh.’ And then when you put it on food, you realize a dab won’t do ya, and you keep adding more.”
That distinction is important: This is a dunking, tossing, splash-it-all-over-the-place condiment, so don’t be shy. It’s addictive and energizing, with zing from red jalapeños and sweetness from orange bell pepper, brown sugar and honey. Savory garlic and arbol chiles draw you back in, bite after bite. Because it’s not super hot — more like a cousin of Thai sweet chile sauce — it’s lights-out on wings or burgers, and you can find it served alongside the latter at Dino’s and Bare Bones Butcher.
Hoff's Hot Sauce
Marinate on It
While Hoff’s Hot Sauce technically hails from Chattanooga, it qualifies here because of what Hoff’s is doing with Frothy Monkey Cold Brew Coffee in their Wake Up Call Hot Sauce. They take the original Hoff Sauce — think Sriracha meets ketchup meets barbecue — and use cold brew to add the kind of depth you get with a coffee-rubbed brisket. If you grew up using Wicker’s BBQ Sauce as a marinade, this will take you back. If you didn’t, you’ll still love the salty, savory bite it adds to soups, bloody marys and omelettes.
Stranger Things
Our last entry requires you to leave the house (they’re not bottling quite yet), but you’ll be glad you did. At East Nashville’s newest hotspot, Redheaded Stranger, Bryan Lee Weaver turns out best-in-class Tex-Mex tacos, starting with transcendent flour tortillas and ending with an array of weird, wonderful sauces. There’s Dreamweaver, a sauce he’s been making for 10 years that you’ve tasted at Butcher & Bee, which is characterized by habaneros, carrots, curry and fermenting liquids for a funky zip. Try it at its hurts-so-good best on the poblano taco: a sweat-inducing combo of crispy rice, roasted peppers, Weaver’s signature whipped feta and Dreamweaver. Another can’t-miss is the jalapeño, made fresh from raw jalapeños, avocado, cilantro and garlic. Its bright-green color and citrusy aroma are everything you want from Mexican food, distilled to a drop. Finally, there’s my favorite, the whimsical Dr Pepper. Weaver wanted to serve Dr Pepper at the restaurant because it’s from Texas, so line cook Tyler Brackett came up with this tribute: a riff on Coca-Cola barbecue sauce that’s sugary, savory and can set off the cheesiest breakfast taco. Arbol chiles, onions, salt and Dr Pepper — Weaver says that’s the gist of this sauce, but I think we all know there’s more to it, and I’m grateful for that. If there’s one thing hot sauce can teach us, it’s that secret ingredients always taste better.
