2016 Portland Hot Sauce Expo

This is a post from my old blog circa 2016 but it was a fun day and a fun post so I’ll include it below :)

Don’t know this guy, but had to get a photo with him for obvious reasons.

I recently entered a contest to win free VIP tickets to the Hot Sauce Expo, not thinking that anything would come of it. Well, low and behold I was one of the lucky 5 to win! I had no idea what VIP entailed - but was excited to hear that free food and drink were involved. The fest itself was lovely, although my shoe choice was mediocre at best (see above).

The VIP tent was home to Portland food and drink vendors as well as your standard Stoli Girl situation. Demitri's Bloody Mary (above) had some delicious bloodys and Portland Ice Cream Company had a unique ice cream sampling, including one with mango? Habanero? Some sort of spicy and sweet combination that I was quite a fan of. I'm also a fan of swag, although eventually I end up with 500 key-chains and pens and wonder what I'm doing with my life.

It was exciting to see my friend Nick Angelo of Fire on the Mountain!

I saw a some sauce companies that I was familiar with - NW Elixirs, Aardvark, Fire on the Mountain to name a few. I happened upon many more that were tasty to try - Lucky Dog, Stinging Kombucha, Sauce Goddess, and the list goes on. I avoided the "eat our hot sauce and die right now" ones. I'm not a masochist. I did try Pika Este, a hot sauce from teeny tiny pepper from Guam. It was very spicy. Enjoyable, but spicy. Ok, maybe I'm a slight masochist.

Pika Este was very flavorful and tasty - and they were so nice!

All in all it was a great time. I was introduced to some great Portland companies, both sauce related and not. I'm not a whiskey fan, but bull run distilling had a nice little set-up. They had a collaboration with one of my favorite hot sauce companies, NW Elixirs, and served us a tropical spicy vodka shot.