My husband loves peppers and pepper sauces. We were only in St. Augustine for three hours before he discovered a new type of pepper sauce on our table: A-Frame’s datil pepper sauce. He splashed some onto his fish, took a bite, and then doused it some more. It quickly became another St. Augustine addiction.
Datil peppers are indigenous to St. Augustine and are of Minorcan heritage. Apparently, this hot-yet-sweet pepper is used in many Minorcan recipes and in most of the restaurants we went to in St. Augustine. We tried various datil pepper sauces on fish, chicken, and beef. It was delicious every time we tasted it and we took a couple bottles home. We also made a trip to the farmer’s market while we were there and found one vendor who sold some of the small, yellow peppers. (They were green when we bought them, but they turned yellow within a week.)
I wish I could describe their flavor. I looked at other resources. They’ve been described as a sweeter habanero but I don’t really agree with that. They’ve also been compared to the west African “fatal” pepper. That makes it sound extremely hot, but we didn’t find it to be so. Just delicious.
Our datil pepper supply quickly ran out once we got home. My husband put it on everything! Guess we’ll have to go back to St. Augustine someday. We do like to feed our addictions.
What peppers are you partial to?
Browsing The Atlas 
I was just looking datil peppers up on Wikipedia :O
I’m more of a habanero person, myself, but these sound tasty. There’s a guy on eBay who sells pepper seeds (I just got some habanero seeds), and he has the datil peppers (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Datil-Pepper-15-Seeds-Buy-2-Orders-Seeds-Get-45-Seeds-Total-capsicum-sinense-/121300782357?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c3e170d15).
– Fellow pepper enthusiast “corkystclaire”
Thanks for sharing this link? I wonder if we could grow em here in Ohio? Not quite the same climate, but maybe one crop in the summer??
No problem – I think they can grow indoors, too. If your summers are around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, you’re good to grow. 😀
I would love to be a pepper enthusiast (the little bottles with their quirky names and labels are so fun!) but my palate is too sensitive for most, unfortunately. Sigh.
I love the titles, too. It’s often how we pick them.
In Korea you must love red pepper chilli paste 고추장. It’s in practically every dish!
I do love red chili pepper paste, so I’d fit right in. 🙂
That makes me think you guys would definitely be able to handle the infamous Chinese hotpot that’s supposedly so hot that one taste will leave your mouth numb. I’ve only ever ventured a taste and that one small mouthful left me unable to taste anything for the next 20 minutes.
We have eaten hotpot in China and loved it! I was just talking about that with a Chinese colleague who’s visiting right now. She’s getting tired of all the bread we eat here and misses her rice, noodles, and hotpot.
Oh my… Just send him to New Mexico. We OWN hot sauce.
We would LOVE that! You may have just bumped up New Mexico on our list of places to go soon.
Have you ever tried the “Carolina Reaper”, the world’s hottest pepper?
I don’t believe we have, though my husband and son did try a pepper sauce in Florida that they had to sign a waiver for first. After they ate it, they took off running through the shopping plaza area until they found ice cream. It was so funny. I mean, they RAN!!! 🙂
Scovilles can make you do some crazy things. The hottest thing I’ve ever eaten was a quesadilla with habanero cheese, habaneros, serranos, red chilis, sriracha, habanero sauce, and habanero sour cream. Added up, there were around 1,000,000 Scovilles. Somehow, I managed to eat it all, but barely.
I saw you were St. Augustine – did you see the lighthouse at all? It’s haunted. :O
Wow! My husband and son would probably want to try a quesadilla like the one you had. I’m not sure I could do it.
Yes, we did go to the lighthouse. We’d hoped to take a night tour of it, but they weren’t available the days we were there.
That’s too bad about the lighthouse 😦 Have you ever checked out Louisville’s Waverly Hills Sanatorium?
Hahaha I love that comment about the mad dash for the ice cream! I cant eat peppers without mustard! Great post! ❤❤❤;^)
Mustard? That’s a new one to me.
hi juliann… here in indonesia i called that “cabe rawit”/small chili,there two color,green n red,red very hot than green 🙂
Good to know. I really really hope to return to Indonesia someday and will look for them.
Juliann, we’ve been growing more and more fond of pepper-based condiments lately, because we’ve been trying them in several countries in the Balkans (ajvar in Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia) and variations on that theme in Bulgaria, Turkey and Romania. The datil pepper sauce sounds like something we’d enjoy too!
The more peppers we try, the more amazed I am by the range of flavors. I’d love to try some indigenous to the places you mention, Tricia.
Hi Juliann!
I just saw this post. My family and I own the company Old St. Augustine Foods that makes the Original Datil Pepper Hot Sauce (on the left in the picture). What did your tastebuds think about our product? Have you tried our Snake Bite Hot Sauce? We would love to your foodie thoughts…
Tastefully yours,
Parker from Old St. Augustine
OSAgourmet.com
Oh my gosh! How wonderful to hear from you. We LOVED the Datil Pepper sauce. We obviously didn’t buy enough of it, because it’s already gone. 🙂 We didn’t try the Snake Bite. Sounds intriguing. We’ll be sure to experiment with that one next time.
That is wonderful to hear that you loved our Original Datil Pepper Hot Sauce! If you are up to it, we would love to send you a bottle of Snake Bite Datil Pepper Hot Sauce just for being awesome. Like the Original Hot Sauce, it also gives a delectable Datil Pepper taste with a bit more zing!
Email me at parker@osagourmet.com and we willl take care of you, Juliann!
Tastefully yours,
Parker from Old St. Augustine
OSAgourmet.com