Quest for Fire One Man’s Search for the Hottest Barbecue in Town

This is it. This time I’ve done it. I’ve swallowed a hot sauce that is actually poisonous.

Forget about the burn, any hot sauce can burn. All these other ominous things are happening. A faint, buzzing tension on my cheekbones, right beneath the eyes. Lightheadedness. My nose is running. I can’t take a deep breath. Sweat streams from my cheeks and scalp. For an instant, space alters woozily as my ears pop. I open my mouth to speak and nothing comes out but a hideous croak.

At last, a moment comes when I’m actually paralyzed. I sit in a Statue of Liberty pose, holding my sandwich 3 inches above the dashboard, afraid to move a muscle for fear anything I do will only make things worse. For 30 or 40 seconds at a time, I sit there frozen and panting with my mind on hold, in a sort of barbecue-induced meditation.

And then I take another bite and it starts all over again. Hey, this may not be everybody’s idea of a good time, but it’s mine.

Basically, it’s just a matter of getting enough pepper in you. Even a pretty tame sauce will set your metabolism to screaming if you chug-a-lug a cup of it. You can enter the Statue-of-Liberty zone eating a peppery sauce in all sorts of restaurants, notably Thai, Korean and Indian.

However, the best food for enjoying this existential pleasure is Southern-style barbecue. For two reasons: One, because most Southern barbecues are basically in the take-out business, you can suffer the indignity of seeming to have poisoned yourself to death in the privacy of your car. Two, there’s the pleasure of discovering what unexpected thing some fellow citizen of yours considers fun. You may think barbecue sauce has to include molasses, vinegar and tomato sauce, but you’re wrong. Just about anything goes. For instance, it’s an open secret that a lot of local chefs use grape jelly rather than molasses to sweeten their sauces.

This stunning individualism is kind of inspiring. However, it means you never know which of any given barbecue place will send you into peppery epiphany. Just smelling a wonderful cloud of hickory smoke doesn’t mean you’re going to find a super-hot sauce on your sandwich. A lot of excellent barbecues don’t have brutally hot sauces (though there is a semi-paranoid theory that they actually do, only they won’t sell it to just anybody).

It’s tempting to look for some outward sign that the ‘cue joint you’re about to enter will have the sauce that will get you sweating. None of them really works, though. In the last few weeks I’ve tried about two dozen barbecue places, and I’ve had to reject a number of theories. Among them were the Multiple Income Theory (that if a barbecue place is also in another line of work--i.e., barbecue/bakery--the sauce will be hot); the Warning Sign Theory (the sign out front will be in threatening shades of red and yellow); the Rustic Rib Hut Theory (the building will look as if it came right out of a ramshackle Southern town; the hottest place in town, Mom’s, fits this theory but a lot of the others are in shiny new mini-malls); the Shack Theory (a barbecue with the word “shack” in its name will be hot), and others.

The Shack Theory was a particular failure--one had a hot sauce that was mostly flavored with ground cloves. The only sure thing is that a barbecue that also offers pastrami or teriyaki is a bad bet.

I have, however, found some pretty hot places. For anyone who happens to be a novice at Southern barbecue, the main thing to learn is that barbecue is mostly sold either as a sandwich or a dinner, but a “sandwich” doesn’t necessarily consist of meat in a bun or between pieces of bread. Usually the bread is served separately, for mopping up the sauce at the end. Because bread also comes with “dinner” portions, the difference between a sandwich and a dinner is basically that the dinner has more meat and usually more of traditional side dishes such as cole slaw, beans or potato salad.

The Hottest

*** Mom’s. That’s an ironic name for the hottest barbecue joint in town. No gentle lovin’ here. This crew is used to seeing carfuls of its customers sitting in the Statue-of-Liberty pose in the lot outside its smoking hut. Passers-by may walk up to your car and ask with a sly chuckle, “Too hot for you?” The sauce is dark brown--smoky, sullen and austere--and in terms of sheer metabolic response, it’s the hottest sauce I’ve ever had. Mom’s Barbeque, 1050 W. Imperial Highway; (213) 756-8405. Open for lunch and dinner Wednesday through Monday. Sandwiches $2.95-$4.50, dinners $5.50-$13.95.

** Leo’s definitely has its own ideas about things. There are no automatic side dishes with your barbecue; everything’s a la carte. And the hot sauce is not like any other. It’s thick, grainy, red-brown and not at all sweet. In fact, it’s pleasantly bitter--I wouldn’t be surprised to learn there was coffee in it. It complements the flavor ofmeat very well, and is ferociously hot. Leo’s, 2619 Crenshaw Blvd.; (213) 733-1186. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Sandwiches $4.35-$4.50, dinners $6.

** Carl’s is located in a little mini-mall now (its original location, appropriately, burned down a couple of years ago). The new location seems a bit up-town; the walls are covered with photos of celebrities, including Richard Simmons, and you can even get barbecued duck. The hot sauce is unchanged though, and it’s a sauce of superlatives. Compared to other sauces it is thicker, darker, more complex, and fuller of the aroma of peppers themselves. It seems less like a hot sauce than a personal grudge and it lights up the inside of your mouth like a 150-watt bulb (the entire effect seems to be concentrated in the mouth). Carl’s, 5953 W. Pico Blvd.; (213) 934-0637. Open for lunch Monday through Saturday, for dinner daily. Sandwiches $1.80 to $3.75, dinners $6.50-$9.15

Also Pretty Hot

*The Rib Lobby has half-a-dozen tables for eating on the premises, and serves gumbo as well as very good, very smoky barbecue, the ribs nicely semi-sweet. The excellent, well-balanced sauce may be a little less hot than Carl’s but it is of the same school--dark and grainy and mysterious.

Sherman’s Rib Lobby, 3800 W. Slauson Ave.; (213) 290-3081. Open for lunch and dinner daily. Sandwiches $3.25 to $5, dinners $5 to $6.

* Warren’s is a bright and clean place in a bright and clean mini-mall, selling chili as well as barbecue (and New York Seltzers as well as grape soda!). You might expect it not to be terribly adventuresome, but Warren makes his own Louisiana boudin sausage (strongly pork-flavored, and very smoky), and he has a powerful hot sauce that seems to be basically tomato sauce, vinegar and crushed pepper. Note: If you order the Spicy Beef Sandwich (thin-sliced beef with pickled green pepper slices) he tends to cut the quantity of sauce; order a little cup of hot sauce on the side so you can be sure of not getting too much pepper. Warren’s BBQ and Chili Parlor, 4916 1/2 W. Slauson Ave. (at Fairfax Avenue); (213) 294-2272. Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. Sandwiches $3.50-$4.95, dinners $3.95 to $6.85.

* Woodie’s is a small chain, with each location identifiable by a cartoon of a slavering bulldog on its walls that says, “I think y’all better have some barbecue.” Very good barbecue it is, good-textured ribs and well-browned sliced chunks. The sauce is pretty hot and is likely to raise a sweat and make your face redden. Here for once I’m pretty sure we have a sauce with the traditional molasses base.

Woodie’s Barbeque, 3446 Slauson Ave.; (213) 294-9443. Open for lunch and dinner daily. Sandwiches $2.50-$4, dinners $5-$7.75.

Woodie’s Barbeque, 11415 S. Western Ave.; (213) 779-6133. Sandwiches $2.50-$4, dinners $5-$7.75.

* Pig Out is another mini-mall barbecue, a brightly lit storefront which actually emphasizes breakfast. However, it also makes good smoky chopped beef sandwiches and has a surprisingly good smoky sauce which concentrates scalp sweating and lip burning.

Pig Out, 1908 S. La Brea Ave.; (213) 936-1613. Open for lunch and dinner daily. Sandwiches $3.99 to $4.99, dinners $4.99-$6.99.