Jewish cowboys and simian tushies, oh my! Ron Levi proved just what a mensch he is by sending some hot sauces to a couple of meshugganah hot sauce collectors like ourselves. We put ‘em to good use. Thanks, Ron!

Self-titled The Tastiest Place in Cyberspace, RoJo’s Gourmet Foods offers a wide selection of products to please the discerning hot & spicy palate. Included are hot sauce staples like Dave’s Gourmet and MyHotSauces.com and such yum-yums as the BBQ-ish goodness of Smokin’ Joe Jones BBQ Company. For our peek into Rojo’s world, we chose the Innuendo Enterprise’s offerings, Baboon Ass Brand Hot Sauces and Bucky Goldstien’s Hot Sauce…creations of half of the RoJo’s duo, being Ron Levi. Ron was kind enough to graces us with some info about the sauces we have been experimenting with for the past few weeks….

Are the products we’re featuring all your creation? If so, how involved are you with creation of these and other of your hot sauces & products?

The products you are featuring are my creations. I came up with the formula for Baboon Ass Brand Habanero Hot Sauce in 1998. I was working as a manager in the Tech industry. The hot sauce helped make the “roach coach” food more bearable. I made the mistake of sharing it with some people at work one day. From that day on I was commissioned to make hot sauce for the masses. It started slow, a case a month and I only charged for the bottles and ingredients. Once it got around the building I was no longer able to keep up with the demand. Rather than try to increase my batch size, I had no intention of doing this for profit, I just made the same amount every month on a first come basis. Once I went legit Bucky Goldstien’s Hot Sauce came around and eventually Baboon Ass Gone Rabid! Of all the items featured on rojosgourmet.com those are the one I make at Innuendo Enterprises LLC.

How important is it for you to use the Internet for promotion of your products? This includes overt advertising, discussion forums, etc.

About three years ago we started our website http://www.chile-heads.com. The web designer crapped out on us twice during the first two years and finally stopped working on it all together the third year. So there it sits in it’s unfinished state. We always felt that an Internet presence is needed to survive this high tech market place. Buyers are web savvy and you need to be there in some form. That’s where Rojo came in. We struck a deal where all of our items are featured on http://www.rojosgourmet.com and we provide fulfillment for those orders. This give us a significant web presence without competing with our wholesale clients, after all Innuendo Enterprises LLC is in the wholesale food business. We try to maintain a web presence by being involved with related forums and blogs on the net and regularly contribute to the forum at RoJo’s Gourmet Foods.

Have you ever Google’d yourself to see what comes up? Apparently, you are out there as a professional trumpet player, chef, and even a porn star. How do you manage to stay so busy?

I have Google’d myself. I gave up the trumpet, it made my lips go numb. The Chef is actually me. I used to own a few restaurants and got some press during that time. Porn star was the most lucrative of my career changes until I got sued for overcharging peoples credit cards on my websites. Once I paid them all back there was only enough money left to make hot sauce again. So here were are. It’s not glamorous but it is tasty. I think I am also a murder victim that was found on a beach somewhere. Ahh Google~

Are you working on anything new for your line of products? If so, what?

We have so many things going it’s amazing! Any day now our line of pasta sauce hits the stores. Two Goombaz Gourmet Italian Gravy is sweeping the area here with orders piling up quickly. It will be available in five flavors. Tony’s Basil & Garlic, Carmela’s Cacciatorra, Meadows Marinara, Paulie’s Puttanesca, and Silvio’s Siccilaina. Once those flavors are well seated in the market place we will release a few more flavors that are wine based. I am also working on a Wing Sauce, the most flavorful wing sauce you’ve ever tasted. There is a set of spices and dry rubs that come in a very unique packaging and some dip mixes that will be both spicy and savory. At Innuendo we are always working to bring new and creative products to the consumers. At any given time we have at least 10-15 items that we are developing. Items that customers have requested or that food trends guide us to develop.

So what’s in all this stuff? An Ingredient List!

Bucky Goldstien’s Hot Sauce: Water, Onion, Vinegar, Habanero Mash, Jalapeno Mash, Habanero Pepper, Red Savina Habanero Pepper, Carrot, Lime Juice, Tomato Paste, Garlic & Spices

Baboon Ass Habanero Hot Sauce: Water, Onion, Vinegar, Habanero Mash, Jalapeno Mash, Habanero Pepper, Fresno Pepper, Red Savina Habanero Pepper, Carrot, Lime Juice, Tomato Paste, Garlic & Spices

Baboon Ass Gone Rabid Hot Sauce: Water, Onion, Vinegar, Habanero Mash, Jalapeno Mash, Habanero Pepper, Red Pepper, Red Savina Habanero Pepper, Carrot, Lime Juice, Tomato Paste, Garlic & Spices, Chile Extract

Joe’s $0.02 Listen up…

Bucky Goldstien’s Hot Sauce: All hail the habanero, slayer of tastebuds worldwide! I was initially expecting the mix of habaneros and Red Savinas to really lay a hurtin’ on my palate, but the taste is outstanding. It seems a little thicker than the Baboon Ass sauces, so it won’t drip off your food as readily. The taste of the peppers themselves make this quite an addicting sauce, which I can’t seem to stop looking for ways to work this into different foods here in the house. Tasty!

Baboon Ass Habanero Hot Sauce: I adore this sauce, if only because it uses fresno peppers, which you hardly ever see listed as an ingredient in hot sauce. It has a certain green taste to it, one that I find adds versatility to this sauce compared to others which are equally as hot. My best experience was adding this liberally to a little marinara sauce. Pasta never tasted so good.

Baboon Ass Gone Rabid Hot Sauce: It’s funny, but only word sets this sauce apart from its less spicy sister sauce: chile extract. Yowza! For those of you who like it hot, blistering spicy-hot, this sauce is for you. You can taste the yumminess of the underlying Baboon Ass sauce briefly before the sweat really begins to pour off your skull. A little dab goes along way, so add this to your home batches of chili with care. Hot!

Linda’s $0.02 I’m brilliant…

Bucky Goldstien’s Hot Sauce: If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, I LOVE sauces that are thick! It’s the stick factor. I always think they taste better and certainly fresher than their counterparts. This sauce is no exception. And, while there’s a lot of heat to be had, there is no loss of taste. Again, the thickness allows you taste the individual ingredients and savor each one.

Baboon Ass Habanero Hot Sauce: While being a little less thick, this sauce is certainly big on flavor but with more tang. I think it would be excellent on or in egg dishes of all sorts. It just has the capacity to offer a bit more acidity to things that need it.

Baboon Ass Gone Rabid Hot Sauce: I have to be honest, I’m very pregnant and just couldn’t bring myself to try this at this time. I’m sure it’s wonderful and I’ll stand by everything Joe had to say about it…but there just aren’t enough Tums to get me through that right now.

Don’t just take our word for it! Here are some online reviews of these sauces:

Feeling Saucy
Hot Sauce Blog

Give these reviewers a shout and ask them to review RoJo’s Gourmet Foods’ products as well.

Alien Zombie
Saucerater

Want to review RoJo’s Gourmet Foods’ products for yourself? Go here and leave your own opinion:

www.rateitall.com/t-1125-hot-sauces.aspx
TheHotPepper.com forums

Recipes

Ron has a select few recipes listed on their website, which you may find HERE. Enjoy!

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