Good morning to all our TFS:CLT subscribers! We’re departing a bit from the usual this week to bring you a few highlights from our first event (well, technically second if you want to count our launch party back in March). We held it at NoDa Brewing last Thursday, May 28, for a specific and very important purpose: Enlist our tribe to help us pick the best small-batch seasonings, sauces, sodas, and salts (!) to sell at the TFS: Mercantile site.
We got what we needed. The chosen three are below.
In retrospect, it was a good problem to have.
We had a bunch of condiments and drinks from small food vendors from throughout the Carolinas who wanted to sell their wares on the TFS: Mercantile site. TFS wanted to accommodate them. But we wanted only the best of the best, and we couldn’t taste all of them. We needed your, and your palates’, help.
And you responded! Last Thursday evening—with the kind and enthusiastic support of Suzie Ford of NoDa Brewing and her team—we set up in the brewery’s private back room and laid out sampling cups, spoons, napkins, and the contestants. And folks showed up, including a twinned pair of prominent local historians—Tom Hanchett and Pamela Grundy—and their respective and equally prominent spouses, Carol Sawyer and Peter Wong.
We pointed them to the tasting tables, and they went to town. First, the winners, whose products we’ll begin selling shortly:
- Sobremesa Mole & Salsas, Charleston, South Carolina. Sobremesa sells three salsas and one hot sauce. But the company’s sample offering was its mole poblano sauce, a concoction so rich and smooth, you’d swear you were eating a savory, earthy version of Nutella.
- DePerno Enterprises, Apex, North Carolina. Chris DePerno sells one food item: Dr. D’s Original Barbeque Sauce. DePerno is a Michigan native with a doctorate in wildlife management who was a professor at N.C. State for 22 years. He experimented until he found the right blend of smoky, sweet, and hot.
- CW Dressings, Fayetteville, North Carolina. CW was founded by a retired Army master sergeant—dig the shoulder-stripes logo; Fayetteville is home to Fort Bragg, after all—who produces date-infused sauces and dressings. CW submitted a sweet hot sauce and a balsamic vinaigrette (the hot sauce was the real hit).
None of this is to disparage any of the others, any of which any of us would happily consume any day of the week. Many thanks to Imladris Farm of Fairview, North Carolina, one of the first small-batch producers featured in the Mercantile, for throwing us some jam (samplers suggest getting your hands on the raspberry), as well as Robert Moreland at Brew and Feed in Mooresville for providing tasty craft sodas infused with locally harvested honey.
Thanks to Suzie Ford (sorry you couldn’t make it, Suzie!) and NoDa Brewing; we couldn’t have asked for a better host, and heck of a suggestion to move indoors on a muggy 90-degree day. Thanks to Mindless Minutiae Trivia for directing folks our way during the trivia session that followed the testing.
Thanks as always to our subscribers for subscribing and to the folks who came out. TFS technically lives on the web and in your email inboxes, but it shows its heart when we get to hang out with you in person. There’s no substitute.
And finally, thanks to Tom for the line of the evening: “The salt is too salty.” These days, I think we all might be too salty.
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