What’s Fueling the Explosion of Chef-Made Hot Sauce?
For Jeremy Chan, the chef behind London’s two-Michelin-star restaurant Ikoyi, hot sauce is the ultimate condiment. It’s spicy, salty and umami, adding a depth of flavor to any dish. He likes it so much, he’s launched his own under the name Magma Concepts.
“Whenever I cook at home, I always use some form of chili condiment with my food,” he tells Observer, ahead of the brand’s April launch. “People want stimulation, flavor and speed of seasoning, and that’s what hot sauce is about. It’s such a simple thing, but if you can elevate people’s experience with it, that’s really exciting.”
Magma Concepts, presented in a stylish aluminum bottle, is billed as a “hot sauce from Ikoyi,” although Chan is quick to note that it isn’t actually made in Ikoyi. It was, however, developed there over the past eight years. Chan decided to produce it for consumers two years ago, and it’s gone through a long process of trial and error since then.
“It’s very different to other hot sauces on the market,” he says. “It’s rounder. It’s not just spicy—it also has a savory character. It has sweetness. It has citrusy notes. We blend two varieties of peppercorn into it, so it has other elements of heat, not just chili spice, and that makes it more versatile than a regular hot sauce.”
Despite the complexity, Chan says it’s not meant to be overly “chef-y.” He wants it to feel elevated and precise, yet approachable for everyday use, whether it’s splashed on fried chicken, sprinkled on popcorn or used as a marinade for roasted vegetables. In Ikoyi, it’s used within the £380 tasting menu, which celebrates British seasonality and West African flavors. But at home, the sauce, which retails for £10, can be added to anything.
“People might be expecting something quite expensive, technical and intricate,” Chan notes. “But it’s not. We’re trying to make an everyday condiment.”
Hot sauce has long been a popular item in home pantries, but in recent years, higher-end, chef-led versions have been emerging on the market. For some, it’s a happy result of the pandemic. For others, it’s a way to meet customer demand. It’s a retail opportunity, of course, but also a way to showcase a particular culinary sensibility outside a restaurant kitchen. In 2020, David Chang’s Momofuku debuted its viral Chili Crunch, and in 2023, Noma’s Noma Projects introduced Corn Yuzu Hot Sauce, created in the Copenhagen restaurant’s test kitchen. At Denver’s modern Taiwanese eatery Pig and Tiger, co-chef and co-owner Travis Masar started playing around with chili crisp during the pandemic.
Pig and Tiger Chili Crisp being spooned onto a plate of noodles and vegetables." width="970" height="647" data-caption='Pig and Tiger’s chili crisp was so popular that they began jarring it. <span class="lazyload media-credit">Casey Wilson</span>'>“I thought I could do it better,” Masar explains. He combined the warming spices and heat of a Szechuan-style hot pot, with the aim of ensuring it was “super textural.”
“Most chili crisps on the market weren’t crispy,” he says. “It started out [as something] to give away for free to the guests at the restaurant.”
The chili crisp became so coveted by guests that Pig and Tiger began jarring it in-house. Eventually, they added a custom label and began selling it at shops in the area, as well as online, for $15. Today, the restaurant offers three versions of chili crisp, and Masar says they plan to expand their reach and variety. Some of Pig and Tiger’s online customers have never even visited the restaurant, showcasing how the products are allowing their food to reach beyond Colorado.
Fallow-e1774629345837.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="Three bottles of hot sauce, branded Fallow Sriracha, arranged on a gray background with red chili peppers." width="970" height="647" data-caption='Fallow’s famous Sriracha. <span class="lazyload media-credit">Fallow</span>'>The same is true for London’s Fallow, which sells a signature British sriracha. The restaurant opened a few weeks before the first pandemic lockdown, and wanted to do something with the surplus of fresh garlic and chilis that would otherwise have gone to waste. “We started fermenting them and experimenting with different batches,” chef, owner, and co-founder Will Murray tells Observer. “After a few months, we landed on the sriracha-style sauce we use today, which is now used across a number of dishes at the restaurant, including our smoked cod’s head with sriracha butter and leek oil.”
Murray has since launched Fowl and Roe, and all of his restaurants share many recipes and cooking videos online. Because of that, their audience isn’t limited to those who have dined in at the restaurants. “Between our YouTube channel and social platforms, we reach a large number of people who follow our cooking, and products like the hot sauce give them a way to engage with the restaurant at home,” he says.
He adds that, from a business perspective, a product can help diversify revenue. “Restaurants are limited by covers and opening hours, whereas a product can reach people in shops, online or at home,” Murray says. “The key is that it should come from the cooking and feel authentic to the kitchen.”
Authenticity is key. There are plenty of mass-market hot sauces and chili crisps available, but something that comes from a restaurant kitchen has to feel more unique. Roberta Hall McCarron, who owns and runs Edinburgh’s The Little Chartroom, Eleanor and Ardfern, started her own product line after enough customers commented on the quality of the hot sauce at Ardfern. “I thought it would be an interesting side business,” she says. “But it also felt like a good way to give something back.”
The chef launched Ardfern Provisions in December ahead of the holidays. She began with two products: a nori hot sauce and an elevated take on the U.K. favorite brown sauce, often served on breakfast sandwiches. The team produced 400 bottles of hot sauce, which retails for £7.50, ahead of Christmas, and now makes around 50 bottles at a time. It ships throughout the U.K., but still feels relatively niche. For McCarron, hot sauce is a good way to showcase a chef’s personality and technical skill.
“To really understand hot sauce, you need creativity and technical abilities, like when you create a dish,” she says. “So why not take something that’s very worldwide and very simple in some ways, but can also be very complex? There are so many things that you can add to give it more depth.”
Sebby Holmes, chef at London’s Farang, feels similarly. Holmes has always made his own curry pastes and sauces at the Thai restaurant. Again, it was the pandemic that offered an opportunity to expand the kitchen outside the building—a commonality with many of the products chefs are now making and selling. Holmes’ Payst by Farang now sells several varieties of curry paste, stir-fry sauces, and four types of chili sauce. The sauces are £5.99, while the curry paste costs £4.75.
“Over the years, we refined them through service, seasonality and constant tweaking,” Holmes says. “A lot of guests would ask how to recreate certain dishes at home, and we realized there was a gap between ‘authentic ingredients’ and something genuinely usable on a weeknight.”
Sometimes, the decision to bottle and sell a particular sauce comes directly from customer demand. Chefs Daniel Patterson and Keith Corbin have been serving their signature Fresno chili hot sauce at Los Angeles restaurant Alta since it opened in early 2019. Soon after, guests began begging to take some home. “We were pouring it into random bottles,” Corbin says. “We were putting it in deli cups or two-ounce ramekins. People really wanted to take it home—they didn’t care what kind of container it was in.”
Alta-1.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A bottle of Alta hot sauce being poured over a plate of fried chicken wings." width="970" height="970" data-caption='Alta patrons wanted to bring home the house-made sauce. <span class="lazyload media-credit">Alta</span>'>The hot sauce was popular with Alta’s customers once it was available to purchase for $10, especially during the holidays. But the sales skyrocketed after Phil Rosenthal and Nancy Silverton’s new diner, Max & Helen’s, reached out last October. The restaurant wanted to use a local hot sauce on the tables. Alta’s sauce was rebranded with a custom label, which diners can now purchase in-person at Max & Helen’s.
“It’s been getting a lot of traction because the place is very popular and other stores are wanting to use it,” Patterson says. “So we’re actually having to try and figure out how to increase our production. Hot sauce is a funny thing—it’s the same stuff that was in the bottle that we sell. Put a different label on it in a different context, and the sales go up. So much of it is about the marketing. They’re going through more at Max & Helen’s than we’ve ever sold on our own.”
There are so many possible variations on what a hot sauce, chili sauce or chili crisp can be and how it can be presented. Brixton nose-to-nail eatery Whole Beast serves several types of homemade hot sauces, available to purchase on request. A fermented red hot sauce accompanies their pickled egg, while their smoked pineapple hot sauce comes with a burger and fries as part of their Happy Meal-inspired “Smile Meal.” Tacos Padre, in London’s Borough Market, sells their own salsa macha. Chef Rick Toogood created his own hot sauce for his Prawn on the Lawn restaurants in London and Padstow, England, and sells a £6 mini version online, as well as a crispy chili sauce.
“We always thought about doing our own version of Tabasco because we go through a hell of a lot of it being served with oysters,” Toogood says. “So with all the excess chili and garlic from the garden, we just went for it. I’ve always been obsessed with chilies. Before I started working in restaurants, I nearly opened an online shop for hot sauces and chilies, which was going to hopefully lead to a restaurant based solely on chilies. We’ve done it the other way around.”
One product can expand into many. Elizabeth Haigh launched her line during the pandemic, when her London-based restaurant, Mei Mei, was closed. She made, bottled, packaged and shipped the first batch of kaya, Southeast Asian coconut sauce, herself. “It was chaos, but it worked,” she recalls. “We made enough to reopen Mei Mei, and when we did, people kept asking when the kaya and chili sauces were coming back.”
Last November, Haigh launched a broader selection of Mei Mei sauces, including a sweet soy sauce, a house chili sauce and a hot honey. The chili sauce costs £5.50 per bottle. “A big part of our customer base has never set foot in Borough Market,” she says. “They found us through the products—online, through a gift, through a friend recommending the black bean crunch chili oil. And then some of them make the trip. The product does the storytelling before they ever sit down at one of our tables.”
For Haigh, it’s also a way to share her Singaporean cultural background with people in the U.K. “It’s the most accessible way to taste something real,” she notes. “If you want authentic Southeast Asian flavor, the alternative is a flight to Singapore. It’s the real thing—just a lot cheaper than a plane ticket.”
High-end, chef-created condiments may be on trend, but they aren’t necessarily a new phenomenon. Peninsula Hotels have been selling their XO chili sauce, developed at Hong Kong’s Spring Moon restaurant, since the mid-‘80s. The spicy sauce was designed to enhance every sort of dish, from fried rice, noodles and dim sum to fresh seafood. It’s available in many of the Peninsula hotel restaurants around the world, and guests can buy it in the hotels’ shops. In London, it costs £30.
“It allows us to extend our reach into people’s lives, offering them the chance to experience a touch of the restaurant expertise at home,” says Wai Ming Wong, executive chef of Canton Blue at the Peninsula London. “We get a lot of customer demand after guests dine at Canton Blue.”
At Ikoyi, Chan is already thinking about future iterations of Magma Concepts, which will be available to order outside of the U.K. “I have a whole repertoire of ideas that I want to release,” he says. “At Ikoyi, we have a limited number of seats, and it’s a very high-end, experiential restaurant. When we started, we were more accessible. I want to go back to that. I want to share the flavors of the restaurant with a much wider audience.”