A few days after I mocked the Super Mario Bros. bath bombs to simulate peecompany contacted me to ask if I would like to review their line of SMB hot sauce. Not long after in my city office. As a spice lover, this was going to be either the greatest collaboration ever or the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. I’m ready. Let’s go!
First, I’m a fan of the watercolor box packaging and the various gold accents. The materials aren’t exactly fancy, but at least it feels like hot sauce maker Truff has gone to great lengths to make this an attractive product you might want to display in your kitchen. Upon opening the box, I was greeted with three bottles of Mario, Frog, and Princess Peach. I’m a fan of the sauce caps. The asymmetrical shape reminds me of a badly cut piece of jewelry or a screwed-up pixel. This detail adds a fun touch that helps separate the bottle from the other sauces in your side dish.
Truffles are edible mushrooms that are often served with eggs, protein or pasta. To be honest, I had no experience with truffle hot sauce until this point. My go-tos are the sriracha or hot sauce packets that come with takeout chicken. Hot sauce is a condiment for the common man, not something I associate with high-end ingredients like truffle, which can cost from hundreds to thousands of dollars per pound. But maybe the Truffle sauce might change my mind.
Review of Mario, Frog and Princess Peach Truffle Sauces
The sauces are not original creations, but bottles of Truff’s existing products. All their hot sauces are made from red chili peppers. Mario and Toad’s bottles contain black truffle, with the plumber’s bottle advertised as the spicier of the two. The bottle of Praskova contains white truffle, which I understand has a milder taste than the black version.
Although I usually eat hot sauce with bone-in chicken as God intended, chicken tenders were much easier to come by while I was in the office. So I stocked up on t-shirts and hoped my face wouldn’t look like pepper while writing the review.
I started with Princess Peach – the bottle that contained white truffle. The sauce tasted slightly sweet with an earthy flavor that I assumed was from the truffle. This was the more complex sauce, neither sweet nor salty dominant over the other. I would recommend it for kids or anyone new to hot sauces.
Toad’s dipping sauce was a bit spicier, but more of a one-note flavor. Just like the character the bottle represented, the taste was quite forgettable.
So my hopes weren’t high for Mario’s sauce. When I eat spicy foods, I like when different flavors interact with the heat. This is one of the reasons why South Asian food is so unpleasant: dishes like vindaloo often combine multiple spices that complement the hot peppers. Another favorite of mine is the Chinese Hot Pot – the Szechuan peppercorns numb your mouth as you eat. In comparison, nothing is more boring than just sitting there with your mouth on fire. I was ready to write off Mario’s sauce, but I should have done my due diligence as a reviewer. So I gave the “Hotter” sauce a shot.
It was hotter than Toad’s sauce and a bit stronger than the packets of sauce I get from my neighborhood fried chicken joint. The full force of the heat did not appear until later. I enjoyed a nice burn in my mouth afterwards, but the timing wasn’t right. I need a sauce to hit my mouth while I’m still enjoying the protein. I went to the fridge at the office and tasted some Tabasco sauce to see if I remembered what the hot sauce tasted like. The immediate burn confirmed my suspicions. The truffle in Truff’s sauces has diluted the heat level to the point where you can use another bottle.
I wouldn’t count on Truff to be my primary hot sauce brand, although they are a fun experiment in trying a fancy sauce with my fried chicken. The Super Mario Bros. Collection is better suited as a vanity and maybe that’s what you’re looking for. You can order in advance up to two boxes of Mario-themed hot sauces for $70 each.