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Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Sauce Popularity Spreads Like Wildfire
By
John Del Signore
Published May 20, 2009
Modified May 20, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published May 20, 2009
Modified May 20, 2009
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Today the Times profiles the man behind the phenomenally popular sriracha hot sauce Huy Fong, which is currently distributed worldwide at the rate of 10 million bottles a year and is used everywhere from Asian street carts to the kitchens of haute cuisine chefs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The 64-year-old founder of Huy Fong is named David Tran, a Vietnamese man of Chinese descent who left the Vietnam in 1979 and came to the U.S. by way of refugee camps. He tells the Times, "I landed the first week of January in 1980. By February, I was making sauce." Now Huy Fong fanatics get drawings of the distinctive red bottle tattooed on their flesh, and leave exultant late-night messages on the company's answering machine. And despite an increasing number of knock-offs on the market, demand continues to build; Huy Fongheads can even find their precious elixir on the shelves of Wal-Mart.
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hot sauce
huy fong
jean-Georges Vongerichten
sriracha
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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