Review - Tom's Roid Rippin' Tapestry Hot Sauce
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One of my New Manufacturer of the Year runner-ups was Tom's Roid Rippin' Hot Sauce. If you pay careful attention to this and the other chilehead blogs, you can track this freshly-debuting sauce makers major debut being at May 2010's Peppers at the Beach event. Several bloggers raved about their offerings, and I was finally able to sample them for myself at the 2010 Weekend of Fire, and impressed I was.
Out of all the fine sauces Tom and company had on display, it was perhaps their Tapestry Hot Sauce that wowed me the most and inspired me to do my first coverage of Tom's Roid Rippin' products on it. So without further ado, here it is in all its glory...
Ingredients:
Aneheim Peppers, Tomatoes, Cider Vinegar, Sweet Red Peppers, Honey, Onions, Tomato Paste, Hot Cherry, Jalapeno and Serrano Peppers, Dark Molasses, Lime Juice, Cayenne and Habanero Peppers, Salt, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Thai Chiles, Garlic, Pepper, Secret Spices, Habanero Extract.
Aroma:
3.5 out of 5. Tapestry is highly reminiscent of typical datil pepper sauces. If you're not quite sure what that means, is that is characterized by strong tomato, onion, hot chile pepper, and even green bell pepper-like notes. Think of it as a ketchup-esque blend with peppers thrown in the mix.
Appearance and Texture:
4 out of 5. I really dug this stuff and its meaty, pasty texture. It's slow to extract from the bottle - and it's nearly too dense to do so - therefore several forceful shakes are what it takes to splash some Tapestry Hot Sauce out on your plate.
Tapestry also looks healthy and appetizing. Dark red and variably chunky, it's about what one would expect from a tomato-entrenched chile sauce.
Taste Straight Up:
4.5 out of 5. "Tapestry" is a terrific name to call this sauce. It builds upon a simple ketchup/datil pepper base and blasts your taste buds out past Jupiter and back. I sensed tricklings of many different flavors glossing over my tongue - onions, a cornucopia of peppers, tart sweetness, honey-like sweetness, rich acidic tones from the tomatoes and more - and it felt like a multi-color, four-dimensional roller coaster ride.
Yet in all of this, the overall taste never got too complicated or disjointed. In fact, the multitude of flavors harmonized into a simplified richness that made my mouth happy.
If you've noticed that the last ingredient listed is "habanero extract" and you're worried that it may tarnish the taste with the typical chemical-like bitterness of chile extract, then don't fret. There is zero extract presence according to my taste buds, nor is there any extreme heat normally associated with it.
Taste on Food:
Fast food was an unlikely first test for Tom's Roid Rippin' Tapestry Hot Sauce. I rarely eat QSR breakfast fare but this time I had an order of relatively dry Hardee's Hash Rounds that needed some sprucing up. The sauce did a great job, and nearly worked better than ketchup.
Another night I dumped some sauce on homemade nachos. I didn't think it complimented the food as well, despite the fact that Tapestry having common Mexican-style components such as tomatoes, onions and peppers.
Weekly pizza night always calls for a good sauce, and it was Tapestry's turn. Yum! It added a lovely sweet kick to my thick, quasi-New York style slices.
Heat:
2 out of 5. Tom's Roid Rippin' Tapestry Hot Sauce possesses a heavy warmth that would please both fair-weather and die-hard fans of heat. For accomplished chileheads, the burn never rises above medium level, which is good if you're wanting mass quantities doused on your food. The fire could be felt mainly on the frontal tongue but not much elsewhere in the mouth.
Label:
3 out of 5. Alas there's nothing ground-breaking going on in the graphics department. It does have some nice, basic usage of colors. The Tom's Roid Rippin' logo and the text are legible and distinctive enough to catch your eye if they were on a specialty store shelf, so that's adequate enough for me.
Overall: 
Tom and Diane Slosser's got a clear-cut winner on their hands. With a datil pepper sauce-like aim with flavors that go in slightly different directions, this is a great-tasting condiment with numerous applications.
Tapestry Hot Sauce and the rest of Tom's Roid Rippin' Hot Sauces are available at http://tomsroidrippinhotsauce.com. Get a bottle of this and the Hot Cherry Pepper & Roasted Garlic to get a sense of what some of the newer fiery foods manufacturers are capable of.
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Spicy Food Reviews - Hot Sauce Reviews, Hot Snacks, Hot Wings, Seasonings, BBQ Sauces, Condiments, and More
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2011-01-17 05:09:28
2011-01-28 11:00:49
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