Hey! Spicy Sakura!

So you’re probably here because you either bought or were gifted a Spicy Sakura hot sauce. Congratulations! You are now part of a brave group of souls that not only support small/local business, but also have excellent taste.

Contrary to our label (things were a little hazy 6 or 7 years ago), Spicy Sakura hot sauces have been YEARS in the making. From fresno pepper/ginger laced “Kasai Hot” featured on former restaurant 1201 Kitchen’s short lived ramen menu circa 2014, to the habanero orange “Cashmeousside (Howboutdat) Hot” made available to all our beloved Sakura’s Taco Island x Kings Rook Club late night taco patrons circa 2015, to the Grand Mammy of hot sauces- BDSM Hot, Sakura has been stacking her spice credentials like tortillas.

While chef at Bourbon Barrel, a friend requested “the hottest hot sauce you can come up with” for a special they wanted to make on their grilled cheese food truck. After contacting friends around town, exotic peppers were acquired, and the laundry list of ingredients decided upon, BDSM was born. Originally this sauce contained 1 million SHU (Scoville Heat Units) capsaicin extract, but has since been removed to make the sauce able to be enjoyed by palates.

The sauce then went dormant for a couple years, until COVID hit.

Taking a leave of absence from work, it was time to figure out some sort of side hustle to keep the lights on and dogs fed. YouTube was the easiest thing to try to get into, but the steep hill of cooking, learning to shoot video, and trudging through editing with cheapo software made other options look a little more lucrative.

Several friends had been asking if any more of “that crazy ass hot sauce you made that one time” was ever going to be available again. Much of what was leftover from that initial batch was given away, but with a small bit of the original batch (truly a testament to its shelf stability) and some scribbled notes, a video was thrown together to share the recipe with everyone.

Since then around the holidays, a few batches of BDSM Hot are made along with a special holiday themed more “entry level” hot. These sauce now also incorporate “hyper-local” peppers grown by Spicy Sakura, as well as ashwaganda root added in later recipes to bring calm and well-being.

Currently, Spicy Sakura has been making slow moves to be able to bring BDSM and other sauces to friends far and wide. This spring a local farm is planting a pepper patch to supply some spice too! In the meantime, BDSM sauce and other sauces are only available directly. To be the first notified of small batch releases and other spice related news, subscribe below!