Contest & Festival Facts
Fri., Aug. 24, 2007
The 17th Annual 'Austin Chronicle' Hot Sauce Festival
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Waterloo Park, 12th & Trinity
11:00am-5:30pm
Free parking is available in Capitol visitors parking garage
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.
No dogs. No coolers
Featuring live music on the planet K stage from:
Mother Truckers
Two Hoots and a Holler
Buttercup
Anthropos
Hydmen
Admission
The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival requests that you pay an admission fee in the form of three nonperishable food items to be donated to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Collection sites will be set up at entrances to Waterloo Park.
Contest
At the heart of The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is the contest itself. The blind-tasting competition for individuals, restaurants, and commercial bottlers 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.
Entry and Judging
You can still enter by bringing 1 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 in this supplement.
Salsas are available for tasting by the public on the Waterloo Park grounds. 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
Commercial bottler red
Commercial bottler green
Commercial bottler special variety
Commercial bottler pepper sauce
People's Choice Award for Commercial Salsas
Commercial salsas are available at separate booths around the park (marked by blue 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
Voting
The 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).
Vote for your favorites by 4pm. Winners will be announced at 5pm.
Sun Garden Shaved Ice Cool Zone/Kid Zone
Children's entertainment featuring the magic of Solaris and face painting by Art for Your Head.
Food Vendors
Sample the fare from some of Austin's favorite restaurants, including:Buffalo Billiards
Chief's BBQ & Grill
Curra's Grill
Matt's El Rancho
Oaxacan Tamaleo
Sun Garden Shaved Ice
Chips for the tasting tent are donated by HEB.
Cold water, soda, Sweet Leaf Tea, and beer will be available to cool off overheated palates.
Capital Area Food Bank's Sizzling Summer Raffle
All proceeds help to feed our hungry friends and neighbors throughout Central Texas!
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 caps ($12) and cool ties ($5).
