Contest & Festival Facts
The Capital Area Food Bank and The Austin Chronicle invite you to join us for the 12th Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival, this Sunday, August 25, from 11am-5pm at Waterloo Park (12th & Red River). Admission is FREE, with your donation of two nonperishable food items for the Capital Area Food Bank.
There’s also free, shaded parking in the state office parking garages along Trinity.
The Hot Sauce Contest
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.
Homemade Salsas/Restaurant Salsas
All salsas in these categories are available for tasting by the public at the designated tasting tent in the middle of the Waterloo Park grounds (triangular dipping chips on the map).
You can still enter by bringing a quart of your best salsa to the check-in area in Waterloo Park between 10:30-11:30am on Sunday. See the entry for on p.6 of this supplement.
For this part of the contest, our judges pick the winners in each of the following categories:
Homemade red
Homemade green
Homemade special variety
Restaurant red
Restaurant green
Restaurant special variety
Winners will be announced at 5pm.
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 (green numbers on the map).
The public is invited to vote in the commercial categories, which include:
Commercial red sauce
Commercial green sauce
Commercial hot pepper sauce
Commercial special variety
We have electronic balloting for the People’s Choice Awards this year, at the Laboratory Computer booth by the cool zone (the blue flag on the map). Vote for your favorites by 4pm.
Winners will be announced at 5pm.
Food Vendors
Sample the fare from some of Austin’s favorite restaurants, including:
Fajitas from Curra’s
Tamales from Nueva Onda
Quesadillas from Evitas Botanitas
Mexican eggrolls from Antonio’s TexMex
Icy treats from Jim-Jim’s Water Ice
Chips for the 12th Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival are kindly donated by El Milagro Tortillaria.
COLD water, soda, lemonade, and beer will be available to cool off overheated palates.
Silent Auction
Visit the Capital Area Food Bank’s Silent Auction tent at the southwest corner of the park.
T-Shirts & Caps
Hot Sauce Festival T-shirts will be on sale under the Chronicle tent for only $15 each. We also have Festival baseball caps this year, $12.
Schedule
10:30-11:30am Check-in for individual and restaurant contestants at the south end of Waterloo Park
11:00 Festival begins
11:00-12:00 Shelley King performs
12:30-2:30 Del Castillo performs
3:00-5:00 Dale Watson performs
4:00 People’s choice balloting for best commercial sauces ends
5:00 Awards announced
This article appears in August 23 • 2002.