The almost creamy, yellow-orange salsa is unabashedly made from the Bhut Jolokia chili pepper — a.k.a. ghost pepper — although you'd never know that this sauce comes from one of the hottest peppers on record, with a Scoville Heat Unit rating of 1,382,118. (For sake of comparison, a jalapeño ranks at between 2,500 to 8,000 units.) Instead, the sauce distills all the flavor of the ghost pepper and leaves behind only trace amounts of that Guinness World Record-winning heat.
It's all warm, musky flavors of dusky spices like cumin at first before giving way to bright, sweet, citrusy punches that taste like ruby red grapefruit slices wrapped around a silver ballpeen hammer. It's a spike and a rush of flavor and then pain that's thoroughly intoxicating. It's a tribute to the stuff (or my own levels of insanity) that after recovering from a particularly vicious stomach bug, I wanted some of that ghost pepper sauce the very next day.
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Troy Fields
The pheasant dog pairs nicely with a bottle of Fireman's #4.
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I had it, too, poured atop a pile of elk chili-cheese fries, the mound of which was delicious albeit otherwise unremarkable-looking. In fact, most of the food here is rather unremarkable-looking, served in standard black plastic trays with thin sheets of wax paper on the bottom. It's one of the ways — I imagine — that owner Sammy Ballarin is keeping costs down here. And more power to him.
My dining companion and I walked away that particular evening with a $35 tab that included an enormous burger, a trio of wild game sliders, that precious mound of chili fries, a Fireman's #4 and a frozen margarita. Counter service encourages a low tab, too, but the employees still never forget to come by and check on each table a couple of times throughout the meal; it's like having the best of both service worlds.
The only disappointment on this visit was that my sliders were cooked to a near char, each and every one of them. I'd thought that ordering the trio was a good way to sample three exotic meats at once — buffalo, venison and antelope, in this case — but was disappointed to see three little hockey pucks delivered to our table. I gazed longingly at my dining companion's Angus burger — cooked to a respectable medium — and stole a few bites of it here and there. The temperature wasn't the only thing respectable about it, either: the sturdy pretzel bun also held fat, red slices of tomato, sharp slices of red onion and big, beefy leaves of butter lettuce. It was a surprisingly hefty and dignified burger from a place that ostensibly specializes in hot dogs.
I tore off the most charred edges of my sliders and tasted the meat inside. Yes, there is a serious difference between venison and antelope — one buttery and sweet, the other grassy and lean — and the sliders should showcase that to great effect...and would, if the tiny patties spent far less time on the grill. I couldn't fault the tiny Slow Dough buns, though, nor the spicy-sweet rémoulade that coated the bottom of each one.
My disappointment was assuaged, however, by my crisply cold pint of Fireman's #4 and the tremendous pile of elk chili fries that sat before me. I can see myself repeating the same scenario — sans the sliders — on Sammy's small but efficient patio as the weather continues its welcome cooling pattern in the coming months. And, of course, with a bottle of that knockout ghost pepper salsa at my side.
katharine.shilcutt@houstonpress.com
