Oh Lawdy Lawdy, if’n y’all wanna kick up a fuss, start complainin’ that someone’s barbecue sauce isn’t as good as your momma’s, or your nana’s, or the one they serve at the Swamp Rat Café on Pocotaligo Street in your hometown.
Sauce is a sanctified, near Eucharist, food embellishment in the South, and it has deep, visceral connection to the folks who made it…and their gun-totin’ kinfolk who keep their cayenne connection close to their hearts.
Even if you’ve just put something akin to diesel fuel in your mouth when eating at someone else’s picnic table, you’d best say something like, “Ooowee, that’s some dandy sauce. What beautiful lady at this table made it?”
Sauces run the gamut. There’s sweet, sour, hot ‘n spicy, brown ‘n dirty, pucker, and just plain nasty.
Every Southern family has the delusion that, with a quaint bottle and a zippy label, they will fill the shelves of the world’s grocery chains and become wealthy celebrities like the McIlhennys of Avery Island, Louisiana, who have been making Tabasco for generations. It’s not likely to happen, but somebody’s makin’ money printing labels.
The Lowcountry Writer heartily recommends that, if you’re gonna open your mouth at a barbecue, put food in it and smile at your hostess because you are eating the best sauce you’re gonna get that day.