Edmonton restaurants whip up homemade hot sauce amid chili pepper shortage

When Edmonton's Padmanadi couldn't get its hands on its normal supply of hot sauce, restaurant staff decided to take matters into their own hands.

The vegan restaurant, located in downtown Edmonton, has been making its own chili sauce over the past two months as one of the many restaurants locally and globally that have been grappling with major disruptions in the world's supply of chili peppers.

Drought-like conditions in northern Mexico and the southern United States have yielded a smaller crop of red jalapeños, forcing California-based company Huy Fong Foods Inc. to suspend production of its popular Sriracha and Sambal Oelek sauces.

Albert, who is Indonesian and only has one name, is the assistant manager of Padmanadi. He said both sauces are recipe staples at the restaurant, which has used them for two decades. Finding a substitution, however, proved more difficult than staff initially thought.

"Because most of the ready-to-go products in the stores contain onions and garlic," he said.

Albert said the restaurant's family practices Mahāyāna Buddhism, a branch of Buddhism that teaches followers to refrain from eating foods from the onion family, as they disrupt the peacefulness of the mind.

According to the Shurangama Sutra, foods like radishes, leeks, onions and garlic are viewed as aphrodisiacs that may increase sexual libido, incite people to anger or cause irritability.

"So we decided that it's best if we made our own," said Albert.

Padmanadi's kitchen staff got straight to work, experimenting with different combinations to find the perfect sauce. It ended up being a pretty simple recipe; locally-sourced red chili peppers are quickly seared in a wok before being blended together with a little bit of salt, sugar and vinegar.

Its simplicity meant testing only took about a week, Albert said. 

"It lasts longer, that tingling taste from the chili," he said, blending together a fresh batch of sauce.

"A fresher spice, I would say."

Albert said the sauces became a big hit with customers; many even ask for their own bottle.

But despite a positive reaction from customers, Albert isn't sure how long the momentum for the housemade hot sauce will last.

"Making our own sauces is not as sustainable," he said, noting how Padmanadi plans to open its third location in Calgary this September. 

"Making three restaurants worth of chili sauce, I don't think it's sustainable, but we will see how it goes."

The shortage has also made life difficult for Siu To, who owns the Green Onion Cake Man in Edmonton.

He said Huy Fong is usually reliable and has never heard about a shortage in the 50 years he's worked in the restaurant business.

"This is the only time in my career facing that I have to step in to make our own sauce," he said.

Ellen Goddard, an agricultural economist from the University of Alberta, said this Sriracha shortage is indicative of a larger and more serious issue — a "symptom of climate change" — and one she predicts will linger over the next decade.

"It's all about water," she said.

"In some places, there's too much, but in other places, we're not getting enough water, and that's making it very difficult to do agricultural production."

Goddard said the ongoing droughts in food production hotspots mean shortages aren't going away any time soon. But she said manufacturers should look at ways to mitigate the impact, such as planting their crops in other continents like Asia that have similar climates.

"Shortages of supply may encourage people to start thinking about different things to grow," she said, adding the researchers will eventually come up with drought-resistant crops.

"If there's an economic demand for a particular product, like the peppers that go into Sriracha, I'm sure scientists will look at that."