This is the kind of story I love. It turns out that Sriracha, the sweet-hot sauce with all the Southeast Asian lettering on the bottle, is American as apple pie. Well, I dunno about apple pie, but as American as fortune cookies, chow mein, California rolls or Tabasco. According to an article in - where else? - the Times, David Tran (a Vietnamese refugee of Chinese extraction) extended a family tradition on arriving in America:“I knew, after the Vietnamese resettled here, that they would want their hot sauce for their pho,” a beef broth and noodle soup that is a de facto national dish of Vietnam. “But I wanted something that I could sell to more than just the Vietnamese,” he continued.
“After I came to America, after I came to Los Angeles, I remember seeing Heinz 57 ketchup and thinking: ‘The 1984 Olympics are coming. How about I come up with a Tran 84, something I can sell to everyone?’ ”
“After I came to America, after I came to Los Angeles, I remember seeing Heinz 57 ketchup and thinking: ‘The 1984 Olympics are coming. How about I come up with a Tran 84, something I can sell to everyone?’ ”
He succeeded, and the article cites everything from fancy restaurants and national chains to kimchi carts and facebook fan pages as proof. The highest form of praise is imitation, of course, and through it Sriracha-like sauce now is being made in Asia:
Over the last decade, a number of imitators have entered the sriracha category. A recent visit to grocery stores in the San Gabriel Valley, near the Huy Fong headquarters, yielded Cock brand sriracha from Thailand, Shark brand from China, Phoenix brand from Vietnam and Unicorn brand, also from Vietnam.
