Jonesing for that kick of siracha in your sandwiches, salads, or cooking? Sorry spicy food lovers, you'll have to get your palate thrills from another hot sauce in Southwest Florida and beyond for the foreseeable future.
Going on two years now, the spicy condiment that has scorched its way into cuisines and palates in the U.S. and around the world remains at a premium these days.
The original iconic chili sauce — Huy Fong Foods-brand Sriracha — seems to be a victim of multiple issues including global warming, drought, supply-chain problems, water rights and just plain deliciousness and going into year two of a red pepper shortage.
A slew of stories in the past few days — Los Angeles Times, Daily Mail, Forbes, Food & Wine, just to name a few — have raised the alarm that the company's popular red spicy sauce is difficult to find, expensive when found and likely not going to be back to former availability levels for some time. Any likely imitators are having the same issues.
In Southwest Florida, retailers have been without the original siracha for more than a year.
A spokesman at Asian Leaf Market in Fort Myers said in a Facebook Messenger text to WGCU that there was no timeline for return of Huy Fong's siracha — but possibly by the winter. The store does carry another brand however, but it is made with a different type of pepper and "they do taste different," the spokesman said.
A casual check of some SWFL stores — Walmart and Target — found no siracha, Huy Fong brand or otherwise. There was a bottle of Huy Fong siracha ketchup at one Walmart, and various off-brands of siracha "flavored" items. But no pure, green-capped, rooster-icon-bearing Huy Fong siracha.
Plenty of other hot pepper-based products line the shelves, but many are other types of peppers or ingredients that provide ether a hotter kick or much different taste than siracha.
Forbes reported Tuesday that a shortage of a Mexican chili pepper used to fill the green-capped bottles continues to hamper production, leading to a surge in prices. A crop failure caused by an ongoing drought exacerbated by climate change is to blame, researchers say.
The sauce produced by Huy Fong Foods in California was created in 1980 by David Tran, a Chinese immigrant from Vietnam. It has grown into a popular foodie addition to almost any type of food that needs a splash of spice and heat.
There's even a documentary about the sauce. "Sriracha" that takes you through it's humble start in the small seaside town of Si Racha, Thailand, where in 1949 resident Ms. Thanom Chakkapak first created the sauce, and named it after the town she lived in, Si Racha (originally spelled, "Sriraja").
Officials for Huy Fong have said they don't know when the shortage will end or when retailers might bring back the iconic bottle because they don't deal with the retail side of sauce sales.
London's Daily Mail and the LA Times documented desperate Sriracha lovers in the Bay Area of San Francisco making off with siracha bottles from local restaurants.
Prices at some venues have ranged from a single 28-ounce bottle listed for $29.99 at an Asian grocery in Oakland, Calif., with a limit of two per customer, from third-party sellers on Amazon, or from some optimistic eBay sellers who have listed single 28-ounce bottles for between $38 and $44.
The Daily Mail found one seller on Amazon Marketplace listing the hot sauce at a sizzling $179 for a package of two 17-ounce bottles.
Food & Wine reported Monday that Huy Fong-brand Sriracha was no longer available to buy through Target.com or Walmart.com.
Forbes also cited a Huy Fong spokesperson Monday telling Food & Wine that the company linked the shortage to an “unexpected crop failure” this spring making ongoing agricultural issues hindering the chili harvest much worse. A company representative in a statement to the Los Angeles Times in April called the shortage “unprecedented.”
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