The Origins of Sriracha
Most of you have probably tasted or at least heard of this extraordinarily popular hot sauce by now. Distributed by Huy Fong Foods, Sriracha is most commonly seen in Vietnamese restaurants throughout the country. With exactly zero advertising campaigns since its creation in 1980, the sauce has enjoyed tremendous success, amassing a massive cult following. Fans put it on almost any food you can imagine: pasta, nachos, mac and cheese, and eggs to name a few. One fan from the documentary “Sriracha” goes so far as to consider even putting the sauce on ice cream. Yet, with all of this success, the origin story of Sriracha and Huy Fong Foods founder David Tran is still relatively unknown throughout the country.
Like ketchup, Sriracha too has been the product of much cultural migration. The sauce itself actually originates from a coastal city in Thailand, Si Racha, created by a Thai woman named Thanom Chakkapak nearly a century ago. This traditional Sriracha flavor is said to be tangier/sweeter, and is more popular in Thailand today, where the dominant brand, Sriraja Panich, is made by a different distributor. In the 1970s, David Tran started creating his own version of this chili sauce in Vietnam that became quite popular in his local area. However, because he was ethnically Chinese, the Vietnamese government kicked him out of the country in 1978. He boarded a ship called the Huey Fong, and found asylum in the U.S., where he established Huy Fong Foods in Chinatown in LA. Interestingly enough, though Sriracha’s presence in Vietnamese restaurants is commonly attributed to its popularity, Japanese restaurants too have created a large consumer base, using the sauce in the popular Spicy Tuna Roll. Thus, the story of Sriracha plays out like this: A native Vietnamese man of Chinese descent brings a popular Thai chili sauce to the U.S., where Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese cultures help popularize the sauce to eventually become the fad phenomenon in American cuisine that it is today.
