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
All entrants: Please bring a container of your best salsa to the check-in area in Waterloo Park between 10:30 and 11:30am on Sunday.
Individuals: Please bring one pint of salsa if you made it at home or one quart if you made it in a commercial kitchen.
Restaurants: Please bring one quart of salsa.
See the entry form below.
Restaurant and commercial salsas are available for tasting by the public in the main tent in the center of the Waterloo Park grounds. Due to health department regulations, individuals’ salsas cannot be served to the general public unless they were made in a commercial kitchen. (All entries will be judged by our panel of judges regardless of where they were made.)
Our judges pick winners in each of the following categories:
Homemade red
Homemade green
Homemade special variety
Restaurant red
Restaurant green
Restaurant special variety
Commercial bottler red
Commercial bottler green
Commercial bottler special variety
Commercial bottler pepper sauce
Winners will be announced at 5:15pm from the festival stage.
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 special variety
Commercial pepper sauce
Voting: The People’s Choice voting for the best commercial bottler sauces will take place under the balloting tent by the Cool Zone (No. 22 on the map).
Vote for your favorites by 4pm. Winners will be announced at 5:15pm.
Texas Culinary Academy Salsa Demo Tent
Head on over to the demonstration tent (No. 12 on the map) and watch local chefs make their specialty salsas.
Noon: Chef Adam Gonzales, Serranos, red sauce
1pm: Chef Foo Swasdee, Satay, special variety
2pm: Chef Kevin Quinn, TCA, green sauce
Food Vendors
Sample the fare from some of Austin’s favorite restaurants, including:
Buffalo Billiards
Curra’s Grill
Matt’s Famous El Rancho
Santa Rita Tex Mex Cantina
Sun Garden Shaved Ice
Torchy’s Tacos
Chips for the tasting tent are donated by H-E-B.
Cold water, lemonade, 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, and Cool Ties
Hot Sauce Festival T-shirts will be for sale under the Chronicle tent for only $10-15 each. We also have festival caps ($15) and cool ties ($5).
This article appears in August 28 • 2009.