The 2006 'Austin Chronicle' Hot Sauce Festival

Sunday, August 27, 2006 at Waterloo Park (12th & Trinity), 11am-5pm

Proceeds from the daylong raffle to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas.

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Free parking available in Capitol visitors parking garage and garage F. Capital Metro has more than a dozen ways to get you to the Hot Sauce Festival. After all the sauce and sun, Capital Metro is a great way to chill out and make it home safely. Routes 7/27, 10/20, and 15/16 will drop you off within a block of the park.

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No dogs. No coolers. No chairs.

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Featuring Emcee for Life, KGSR's Bryan Beck & live music on the Planet K Stage from:

The Texas Sapphires (3:30-5pm)

Guy Forsyth (1:30-3pm)

White Ghost Shivers (Noon-1pm)

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Contest & Festival Facts

Admission

The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival requests that you pay an admission fee in the form of two nonperishable food items to be donated to the Capital Area Food Bank. Collection sites will be set up at entrances to Waterloo Park.

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Contest

At the heart of the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is the contest itself. The blind tasting competition for individuals and restaurants is conducted by some of the top chefs in the state of Texas. They take hot sauce seriously and so do most of the people who enter. Several previous winners in the individual category have gone on to start their own hot-sauce companies.

The contest has three levels of competition: individuals (homemade), restaurants, and commercial bottlers. This gives us a good chance to recognize homemade salsas in a class by themselves. It also gives us a chance to consider salsas made fresh daily in restaurants apart from those made for grocery store shelves. The three categories of hot sauce for each level are designed to leave enough room for a wide variety of styles. In the past, special variety sauces have included fruit salsas, dried-pepper salsas, and even a purple sauce.

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Homemade Salsas/Restaurant Salsas

You can still enter by bringing a quart of your best salsa to the check-in area in Waterloo Park between 10:30 and 11:30am on Sunday. See the entry form on the cover of this supplement.

Salsas are available for tasting by the public at the designated tasting tent in the middle of the Waterloo Park grounds (marked by triangular dipping chips on the map).

For this part of the contest, our judges pick the winners in each of the following categories:

Homemade red

Homemade green

Homemade special variety

Homemade pico de gallo

Restaurant red

Restaurant green

Restaurant special variety

Restaurant pico de gallo

Winners will be announced at 5pm.

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Commercial Salsas/People's Choice Award

Commercial salsas are not included in the rest of the tasting but are available at separate booths around the park (marked by green numbers on the map).

The public is invited to vote in the commercial categories:

Commercial red sauce

Commercial green sauce

Commercial hot-pepper sauce

Commercial special variety

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Voting

Time Warner Cable's People's Choice voting for the Best Commercial Bottler Sauces will take place under the balloting tent by the Cool Zone (the blue flag on the map).

Want to vote while you're in line tasting your favorite hot sauces? Here's how:

Use your cell phone or laptop to vote for your favorite commercial bottler sauce while you're at Waterloo Park!

Cell phones: austinchronicle.com/events/hotsauce/06/mobile

Laptops: austinchronicle.com/events/hotsauce/06/vote

Vote for your favorites by 4pm. Winners will be announced at 5pm.

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Sun Garden Shaved Ice Cool Zone/Kid Zone

Children's entertainment provided by Art for Your Head – face painting and more!

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Food Vendors

Sample the fare from some of Austin's favorite restaurants, including:

Matt's El Rancho

Nueva Onda

Nutty Brown Cafe

Oaxcan Tamaleo

Santa Rita

Sun Garden Shaved Ice

Chips for the tasting tent are donated by H-E-B.

Cold water, soda, lemonade, and beer will be available to cool off overheated palates.

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Capital Area Food Bank's Out 'N' About Austin Raffle

ALL proceeds help to feed our hungry friends and neighbors throughout Central Texas!

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T-Shirts & Caps

Hot Sauce Festival T-shirts will be for sale under the Chronicle tent for only $10-15 each. We also have festival baseball caps ($12), sunscreen ($3), and cool ties ($5).