After banging away at some of the hotter sauces in the Tahiti Joe line, I took a step back and wanted to try something a little milder just to get my bearings. That said, I began carting around this bottle of the Tahiti Joe Polynesian Hot Sauce around as a side-by-side comparison with some of his other sauces. The results surprised even me!

Now, I didn’t have any Polynesian food to try this sauce upon. No taro. No exotic banana or coconut dishes. I did have some chicken, which is a popular choice in Polynesian food, but I’m not sure the sauce would make it Polynesian by its own efforts. When in doubt about a sauce, simply pour it over every food imaginable and let the chips fall where they may. This is just such a tale.

Do I focus too much on ingredients? Perhaps I do. Sometimes I definitely do. Take for example this list:

Ingredients: aged red peppers, vinegar, honey, clam juice, worcestershire, concentrated vegetable juice (water, tomato, lemon juice, lemon oil, salt, ascorbic acid, malic acid, dehydrated parsley, carrots, bell peppers, and beets), salsa, fresh onions, habanero peppers, jalapeno peppers, parmesan cheese, fresh garlic in water, carrots, spices, corn starch

As I mentioned before in my previous review of the Hot Ass Devil Juice sauce, this is roughly the same list of ingredients that grace the bottles of many of TJ’s sauces. I wont belabor the point about it, but the only question is if this combination achieves the heat vs. flavor profile that this milder sauce wants to do. One thing that I noticed was that this sauce had a little “separation anxiety,” in that it didn’t want to stay homogeneously mixed and needed to be re-mixed if the bottle was left standing for any length of time. I judge this by the collection of seeds and spices which gathered at the bottom of the jar each time I picked it up at the beginning of the day.

Taste: My first thought, with the straight taste, was that the sauce did taste a lot like many of the other sauces I’ve tried from TJ. It shared the great taste from the Hot Ass Devil Juice but without a lot of the heat of the Ahi of Kahuna XX Hot sauce. It’s middle-of-the-road, and pretty comfortable to boot. I’d call the heat about a 5/10 or so, and without too much accumulation of heat with extra sauce used. The taste is mostly of the red peppers and vegetable juice, with the hints of worcestershire and the combo of peppers as well. I saw combo for peppers because I couldn’t discern whether the jalapeno or habanero seemed to be a more dominant flavor. In that way, it’s a fairly even sauce.

It was this evenness which I felt provided much of the utility to this sauce, as there were few food choices that this failed to improve. I didn’t want the taste to get lost in the food, as it was prone to do in my soups, stews, and sauces. I liked it poured over my food, and using lots of it. It’s only mildly thick, so it does tend to gather in a puddle on your plate…although I was motivated not to leave a drop behind at any meal. To me, it was an awesome addition to meats of all kind…from red meat to poultry to fish. Potential to be better than ketchup, or sometimes even spicy mustard, to liven up your mundane mealtime hamburger.

Overall recommendation: I have always liked the hot sauces I use to taste better the hotter they get, but this one manages to maintain its great overall taste profile at a lesser heat level. Having a core list of ingredients for a line of hot sauces does allow to manipulate them to allow each person to choose one that suits your heat tolerance. While this one doesn’t scorch your tastebuds, it does provide an element of utility that will allow you to use it in a wider selection of foods. With medium heat and great taste, it’s tough to go wrong with many of Tahiti Joe’s hot sauces. It may not truly be Polynesian, but it won’t keep you from imagining yourself on a warm, sunny beach in the Pacific when you use it. Enjoy!

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