The Labels
If you can take the heat, then Light My Fire is the peppery place for your palate.
From ceiling to floor, from front to back door, the bedroom-sized hot sauce emporium at 2907 1/2 Santa Monica Blvd. in Santa Monica is stocked with close to 400 varieties of mild to hellacious sauces.
Depending on your tastes (and your taste buds), you can choose the hot stuff made with various combinations of cayenne, piquin, rocoto, serrano, jalapen~o, pasilla, Anaheim and other capsicum concoctions, says co-owner Young Min.
Min says the fave among young people is Blair’s Death Sauce, mostly because of a dangling chain with a cork skull attached to its top. The chains have become popular as earrings, key chains and jeans adornments.
“But most customers just collect the sauces for the bottles and the funny names,” she says.
Guys are hot for Pain & Suffering and Pleasure & Pain with logos of Xena-type, whip-snapping spice girls asking in text, “How hot can you take it?”
And women, says Min, are partial to Hot Buns at the Beach because of the cheeky thong-wearing men strutting on the bottle.
Among the labels, ranging in price from $3 to $6 and in heat index from 2 to 9: Tongues of Fire, Jump Up & Kiss Me, 911 Hot Sauce, Molten Lava, Spontaneous Combustion and Kryptonite, the latter’s label bragging the sauce is “mean, green and certainly not intended for use by mere mortals.”
If you want to go for the ultimate burn, Min suggests Dave’s Insanity Limited Edition Reserve ($24.95)--twice the heat of Dave’s main staple, Insanity, that registers off the chart with a 10.
Each Dave’s Reserve bottle is hand-signed, numbered, dated and laid to rest in its wooden coffin tied with a yellow and black ribbon emblazoned with the word “Caution.” Because its contents are so firecracker-hot, the label warns: “Not for human or animal consumption. (Mannequins OK).”
Indeed, only a dummy would dare to drizzle it on a taco.