All images: Chile Mojo
Calling on spice lovers! Are you aware that Adelaide is the home to the Southern Hemisphere’s largest selection of hot sauce? With over 700 different varieties, Magill Road’s Chile Mojo is sure to have a hot sauce that will blow your socks off.
The local specialty store was born of necessity in 2004, when owners Joel Adams and Morgen Britt struggled to find essential Mexican ingredients in Australia.
“Chile Mojo was designed to fill a gap in the market,” Joel said.
“A lot of locations that sell Mexican food just sell what they think Mexican food is. We wanted to provide authentic Mexican ingredients that are key to Mexican meals, like Mexican corn, beans, dried chillies, and so on.”
Joel is a chef by trade, and hoped to bring Adelaideans the opportunity to cook great Mexican meals at home. Chile Mojo is the combination of all their discoveries – a true reflection of their love for Mexican cuisine and all things Chile Pepper.
The show-stealer is (unsurprisingly) Chile Mojo’s “Wall of Flame”, sporting hundreds of bottles of hot sauce, BBQ sauce, wing sauce and more. While the shelves can only display 340 bottles, they rotate regular to show all 700 bottles on offer.
Joel makes a point of not guiding people too much to particular bottles of hot sauce.
“I work really hard to not tell them what to do,” said Joel. “It’s all about preference. I like to encourage people to try new things each time!”
We recommend trying some of the sauces featured in Hot Ones (the show where celebrities eat hot wings until they cry) and recreate it with your mates! From “wimpy mild” to eye-watering, hiccup-inducing heat explosions, Chile Mojo stocks them all.
If this isn’t your first rodeo in the hot sauce scene, you can filter through the varieties by country of origin, heat rating, brand, flavour feature, and predominant chile.
While it’s fun to browse the online store, there’s nothing quite like the sensory experience of exploring the store in person.
If you want something to really test your heat limit, try one of their Carolina Reaper-based hot sauces. The Carolina Reaper is the hottest chilli in the world, and Chile Mojo happens to stock 48 varieties of Carolina Reaper sauces!
Curious? Check out Chile Mojo’s website for their complete selection, or visit them in person at 395 Magill Road, St Morris SA 5068.
