New England Hot Sauce Festival brings the heat — and ocean support
Gabe DiSaverio feels very strongly about sharks and about hot sauce.
DiSaverio is the owner of Spicy Shark Hot Sauce and the main organizer of this weekend’s Hot Sauce Festival, which will be held Saturday, July 26, at Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton. He is also a huge fan of sharks.
“I’m very passionate about shark conservation,” he said. “I’m a scuba diver. Aside from being a Jaws fanatic, I’m kind of obsessed with sharks. I’m very into shark conservation. As a company, we work with and donate to a lot of nonprofits in the shark conservation world. So that’s the reason for the name of our company. I wanted to keep that same spirit alive for the hot sauce festival.” Last year’s Festival raised almost $20,000 for shark and ocean conservation.
The Hot Sauce Festival, which focuses on hot sauces made in New England and the Northeast, has attracted a truly surprising amount of interest, DiSaverio said.
“We have around 60 vendors total,” he said. “So we have 30 hot sauce vendors, and I’m not exaggerating when I say the wait list is over 30. It’s crazy the interest we’ve gotten from the hot sauce community. We’re a New Hampshire company, but I consider New England to be our home state, our home region. And there’s nothing else like this here. The thing about all the hot sauce festivals [I’ve been to] were they were all totally different except for the fact that they were all super well-attended and everyone was happy.”
DiSaverio said one of the guiding principles of the New England Hot Sauce Festival is that it should be a family-friendly, inclusive event.
“I wanted to have a real community feel and my spin on it is the whole-family aspect,” he said. “A lot of hot sauce festivals have become drinking festivals. There’s no liquor, there’s no wine, and there’s no outside beer other than the Smuttynose beer on site. It’s totally intended for … families. So we have bouncy houses, we have face painting, and we have a kids’ magic show.”
“There are four official eating contest events,” DiSaverio said. “Three of them are amateur-level and one of them is professional. So the amateur ones are a Jalapeño Speed Contest, to see who can eat a pound of jalapenos the fastest. Then we’ve got our Hot Wing Contest, which is five different rounds of progressively hotter chicken wings. And then we have the Super Hot Competition and that is hot peppers straight from Ed Curry’s farm in South Carolina. Ed Curry is the owner of Pucker-Butt Pepper Co., which is such a great name. And he is the creator of the Carolina Reaper pepper and more recently Pepper X, which beat the Carolina Reaper as the hottest pepper in the world. So all of these peppers are coming straight from his farm.”
To compete in the Super Hot Competition, contestants need to submit an application, including a resume to prove their bona fides.
“I’m someone who’s got a crazy high tolerance,” DiSaverio said, “but if I had a bite of a Carolina Reaper — which I have — a bite of one will knock you out for at least a day. You will be dealing with that for a long time. So the fact that some of these people can eat over 50 of them is just a whole another level of insanity.”
That said, DiSaverio made it clear that the Festival is not just for chili-head thrill-seekers.
“You don’t even, like, have to like spicy things to have a good time,” he said. “There are so many contests to watch, there’s beer to drink, and of the actual food vendors — the nine food trucks we have — none are spicy or hot-themed. They’re all very different. You can come to a hot sauce festival, have no hot sauce, and still have an amazing, amazing time.”
4th Annual New England Hot Sauce Festival
When: Saturday, July 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Smuttynose Brewery, 105 Towle Farm Road, Hampton, 601-8200, smuttynose.com
Tickets: General admission tickets are $15; VIP tickets are $20. Visit newenglandhotsaucefest.com.
Featured photo: Competition. Courtesy photo.