Will Hot Sauce Sales Forecast the '08 Winner?
Hot sauce? Hot air? Both?
Barack and Hillary are tied for 12 percent, and Newt's hanging on, just barely, with 4 percent. Independent candidate Nunov Deabove? He's missing from the mainstream media but has a respectable 9 percent here. These aren't AP polls, but hot sauce sales for the presidential-themed bottles at Dave's Gourmet.
Dave, the same guy responsible for the tongue-burning Dave's Insanity sauce, created an online voting system for his presidential hot sauces. Taste-wise, they're all the same. Hillary's got the same red-chile-pepper content as Mitt. And Fred Thompson isn't full of Southern smoky flavors just because he's from Alabama. But what cartoonish caricature do you want to support?
At Uncle Brutha's hot sauce emporium in Washington D.C.'s Eastern Market area, Obama is missing from the shelf. All four original bottles are gone, and though Clinton's row is well-stocked, Uncle Brutha's has gone through three orders for her (selling eight in total). Edwards and Giuliani are trailing, with only one bottle sold each, and still none for Gingrich, Thompson, McCain or Gore. Wait, Gore is running? According to Dave he is. Speaking of Dave as the presidential oracle, he had Thompson in bottle form even before the man officially declared his candidacy.
Ah, if only the Hot Sauce World really did govern national politics..
About the author: Erin Zimmer, Serious Eats's Washington, D.C., correspondent, is a just-graduated Georgetown gal following her nose about town as Washingtonian magazine's Dining intern and Best Bites blogger. She got her start as the Hoya campus paper's food columnist, and since entering "real person-hood" has ached for her dining hall's omelet station.
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2 Comments:
The voting on Dave's site is rigged! I swear. If you click on the candidates' names, you're fine and will be taken to the correct page. But if you click on any of the corresponding ballot circles, they all go to Obama's sauce.
Also: Is the fact that the sauce is the same no matter which one you buy supposed to be political commentary—six of one, half dozen of the other?
Also: I like the description on Dave's bottle—"Hot sauce and politics aren't that much different. They both aim to make things better, and in the end, you wind up getting burned."
Adam Kuban at 3:22PM on 09/13/07
So has obamas sauce been blessed by his Pastor? haha
Now do these sauces actually taste good or is it some mass produced sauce just in time for the elections?
benito at 2:57PM on 04/03/08