[imagesource: Scott Olson / Getty Images]

First, they came for fish paste, and I rejoiced because it’s a disgusting, stinky stain on society and the world is better off without it.

Then Marmite became a scarcity and I started to worry.

Well, hit the panic button because we could be in for a sriracha shortage and nothing is sacred anymore.

Side note – I can’t help but hum ‘ra ra sriracha’, sung to the tune of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’, whenever I hear the word. No, just me? Moving on.

Unfortunately, an “abysmal spring harvest” of Mexican chiles has caused an “unprecedented shortage” of the hot sauce. Below via The New York Times:

…a shortage of red jalapeño chiles has threatened it all for sriracha, a beloved condiment made from sun-ripened peppers from Mexico and seasoned with vinegar, salt, sugar and garlic.

Image: Emily Berl / The New York Times

Huy Fong Foods, a company based in Irwindale, Calif., that produces one of the most popular sriracha sauces in the world, confirmed that it was experiencing an “unprecedented shortage” affecting all of its chile-based products.

In Spanish-speaking countries and regions of the US, “chile” is the most common variant of “chilli”.

Huy Fong Foods goes through an estimated 100 million pounds (45,3 million kilograms) of chiles each year. Due to the shortage, the company announced in April that all US orders placed after the middle of the month would be paused until September.

How many sauces are so famous that they have their own documentaries?

A quick history lesson while we mourn:

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, [David Tran, the founder of Huy Fong Foods] landed in Los Angeles, where he decided to make sriracha, a sauce believed to have been invented by a Thai woman named Thanom Chakkapak.

By 1980, he was mixing his sauce and delivering orders in his blue Chevy van. Over the ensuing decades, interest in sriracha exploded…

In 2013, he said, the company was making 70,000 bottles of the sauce daily from red jalapeño peppers.

Panic buying in the US has already set in and those who can’t find bottles have had to endure the horror of switching to alternative sriracha brands, which they say lack that trademark taste.

“I don’t even know how to eat a Vietnamese spring roll without that sauce!” [Lurene Kelley, 51, of Memphis] exclaimed. “Now, that is a food crisis.”

That is very much a first-world food crisis.

Articles talking about possible sriracha alternatives are doing the rounds, in case you want to get a head start, and the price of the sauce on Amazon has skyrocketed from around $12 to in excess of $28.

It remains to be seen to what extent we’re affected down here on the tip of Africa but it seems likely our supplies will suffer.

There’s no shame in hiding the sriracha when guests come around for dinner. We won’t judge.

[source:nytimes]