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DC Foodies: Chilli No 5 ‘Sauce of Life’ Brings BIG Flavor …and Superfoods to Your Next Meal

DC Foodies: Chilli No 5 ‘Sauce of Life’ Brings BIG Flavor …and Superfoods to Your Next Meal with an unmistakable spicy hit, combined with superfoods & health supplements.

Providing the flavorful gourmet vegan chilli sauces & gift sets using the most natural & healthy ingredients.

Chilli No 5 Brings 'Superfood Sorcery' and Big Flavor

Chilli No 5 Brings ‘Superfood Sorcery’ and Big Flavor

Delivering the best range of your favorite international flavors of chilli, marinades and BBQ hot sauces.

Co-founder Rumble Romagnoli joined me for a conversation about food, family, making chilli healthier and bringing their award-winning chilli sauce to the masses.

Chilli No. 5 Co-founder Rumble Romagnoli

Chilli No. 5 Co-founder Rumble Romagnoli

The below conversation has been edited for length and clarity.  Find the full, un-edited conversation at our YouTube channel.

 

When you think about hot sauce, can you tell us about a celebration or a memory, something in life that inspired you to get so excited about hot sauce?

Rumble Romagnoli: Yeah when we’re smaller and we’re in the kitchen, it’s such a magical experience, isn’t it?

I had a real Italian Nonna so an Italian grandmother who always had bubbling pots and pastas and, Mules and fish and meat.  My mother and my sister; so great moments as a child cooking in the kitchen and then out on the dining table with all the family.

It was great and now I love cooking and it makes me really relaxed. Just zoning out, cooking for the family, growing my own vegetables, chilies and then gathering around tables with friends and family just to enjoy. And that’s really where this all started.

 

What does day to day life look like for you.  How did you decide to split up some of that time with a hot sauce endeavor?

Rumble Romagnoli: You remember COVID wasn’t really a nice time for anyone. We were there in a small apartment with lots of small children. It was chaos.

We couldn’t see our friends. We couldn’t see our family. They were all over the world and it was desperate times. So I suppose setting up Chili No. 5 was all about this kind of wanting to get back together with people enjoying moments and being together, sharing and getting fresh, healthy food and not lining up in the supermarket.

Chilli No 5 Brings 'Superfood Sorcery' and Big Flavor

Chilli No 5 Brings ‘Superfood Sorcery’ and Big Flavor

A lot of chefs who I was very friendly with all had lost their jobs. I was like, Hey, can you make sauce? They’re like, yeah, of course I can. So that’s how it all started. 

And we started trying out new flavors and we love world cooking. So that’s how Chilli No 5 started.

From your Chilli expert point of view, what should someone look for on a label that lets us know this is a quality chilli sauce?

Rumble Romagnoli: I think you guys are better at it than us to be fair. You’re fanatics; incredible.

I’m not a real expert. I just love creating great food for my family and friends. And we’ve tried to make… The best world hot sauces but they’re not going to blow your head off. It’s not really a hot sauce. They are chilli sauces. 

Chilli No 5 variety of flavors

Chilli No 5 variety of flavors

What I think you should be looking for on the bottle is: great ingredients, as many as you can get. No numbers, no coloring, no baddies.

I’m looking for just superfoods and anything that’s gonna make me glow.

In my world, when I think of chili sauce and hot sauces, I don’t always think of superfoods.

Tell me a little bit about where the idea came from to so strongly cross over superfoods with chili.

 

Rumble Romagnoli:  I love spice and tingling on my tongue and that kind of rush you get from that spice and hot.  The hot sauce or the flakes or the chili oil. My wife loves to be healthy. Happy wife, happy life they say, so I just combined.

I was doing something more spicy and she says, why don’t you put some good stuff in there? And I’d been reading a lot about Guana ginseng, maca; and all of these are in our sources. These are natural supplements that you buy in the shop.  You have some of that and it really picks you up, increases your concentration, which I need for long days. I need more energy. I’m getting older. So I was like, hey let’s just put them in the hot sauce and then you got the best of both worlds. So that’s the superfood sauce or superfood sorcery we like to say.

That was all my wife’s doing to be honest.

 

I feel like a lot of chilli sauces are just gunk. When I think superfoods, I think health. Is your Chilli No 5 a health food?

Rumble Romagnoli: Absolutely. I’ll pick out one of these bottles.I wouldn’t say a healthy hot sauce. I would say a hot sauce full of healthy ingredients because you never know there are some sugars in here and you never know what people will find healthy or not healthy.

But we’ve got in this Jamaican jerk, which is great on a barbecue chicken as a marinade as a condiment as a barbecue sauce. We’ve got fresh red onions, fresh spring onions. Chilli No 9 chili. Fresh chilies, which are all really healthy for you. There’s ginger. There’s garlic. There’s lemon. There’s lime. There’s agave syrup. 

We tried to tone down the sugar but keep it a little bit sweet, apple cider vinegar, we’ve got, extra virgin olive oil. It goes on black garlic, thyme, nutmeg, allspice, black pepper, guarana, maca, Ginseng, l arginine.  It doesn’t stop.  That is packed to the rims, full of healthy ingredients.

We’ve tried to put the healthiest ingredients we could find and make it as tasty as possible using these ingredients and authentic to Jamaica and their jerk sauce.

It’s a sauce packed full of healthy superfood antioxidant ingredients and that’s maybe why it’s winning all these awards for taste. 

Because bottom line is it has to taste nice before being healthy.

 

Nobody wants a science flavored chili. So I agree with that.   Let’s talk about some of your favorite flavors.

Rumble Romagnoli:  It’s hard because we have over 15 sources. But one of my favorites which you’d probably love as well is the Mexican Fury. My sister lives in Guadalajara in Mexico. She left the UK and went all around South America and ended up finding a lovely guy and settled down there. 

Mexican food is fantastic. It’s just really great.  Full of flavors and all sorts of different ingredients that we can’t grow in the UK or in Europe.  You guys have got such great weather down there in the South, Miami, Florida. Texas, Mexico between the South of the U. S. and the North of Mexico.

So you’ve got the jalapenos which are just incredible. We’ve got all of these beautiful chilies, the habanero come up with an automatically smoky flavor when mixed with the red peppers, the tomatoes, the red onions.  They fuse this on the palate to really pair very well with chicken, prawns, tacos, burritos or even egg for breakfast or pancakes.

The Mexican Fury is a really good one. We won 16 awards for different sauces. I love chipotle, anything smoky in our Louisiana barbecue. We’ve tried to tone down the sugar, add a bit of cognac whiskey, bourbon whiskey.  We’ve added the classic American ingredients in there to make a kind of healthy style Louisiana barbecue. 

Then the harissa is a great one. It’s really popular. it’s North African full of caraway seeds, cumin seeds, olive oil, lots of of incredible deep ingredients that really sit on the back of the tongue. There’s lots of ingredients there that kind of bring your food to life. 

We want to bring life and energy into a barbecue situation, dinner with granny, breakfast before work, sandwich on the bench in Manhattan.

 

Tell us a little bit about the competitions you’ve entered.

Rumble Romagnoli: We were only a year old and we’d come up with these sauces and we’d thought they were good.  The founder Chef Colin and then we had a team of chefs working in our London kitchen and our South of France kitchen and we entered the Great Taste Awards.

These are quite big awards in the UK but it’s international awards where all kind of fine foods, gourmet foods are tested by panels of hundreds of judges. It’s quite a strict competition. 

So first year we came in and we won seven stars for 11 products. We’re very happy. It was incredible. The Jamaican jerk really got a good one. The heavenly Harissa came in very well. Our chilli oil called Pizza Pizzazz.

Our chili flakes are all fresh and lovely coming from all sides of the world. Carolina Reaper, the Scorpion, the Habanero, the Ghost, the Number 5 chili from India. 

We watched and read all of the judges’ comments and we’re so thankful that they really detailed about acidity, balance, flavor structures.

Then we reworked it.  We played around with ingredient quality, we changed vinegars slightly, the cooking process.  We started baking the vegetables, the peppers, the onions, the red onions.  The tomatoes really started getting more flavor.  We put in a bit of olive oil at the start to get the flavors moving around.

Then we came in this year with 13 awards out of 16.  With our 7, that makes 16 of our total products have won awards by the Great Taste Awards.

We want to create the best chilli sauces on the planet. That’s my mission.

 

How is Chilli No 5 going to grow and evolve?

Rumble Romagnoli: It’s happening quite quickly and we have a B2C strategy and service strategy.

We want to have the most delicious sauces in every category.  We’re just working on each recipe and we think  if we make the best sauce, people are going to love the best sauce, and then they’re going to buy the best sauce.

A bit like Apple, just make the best products and people just keep buying them  We’re getting into big stores in the UK, placements in Monaco.

We are in lots of great high end butchers, delicatessens and it’s going really well. 

So we’ve got this B2B strategy. We need to impress the professionals.   We’ve impressed the people who love healthy lifestyle, love delicious sauce, gourmet. But now we have to impress the industry.

Obviously coming to America is the big move. 

Tell us all the ways we can learn more about Chili No. Tell us your website, social media. 

Rumble Romagnoli: The website is the big one, Chili No.5. Shop us on Etsy.  Follow us on instagram, Facebook, YouTube. 

We’re also quite present for hot sauce gift sets. We do five or six incredible hot sauce gift sets which are collections of the sauces. And we’ve got mini little minis and you can make your own you can personalize because we’ve got 15 sauces.

We’re very big at Christmas. Very big at Father’s Day, Thanksgiving and we will send the sauces over to you guys in the states. No problem. If anything breaks, if anything’s damaged, we will refund you and resend you the sauce you ordered because that’s the least we can do.

 

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DC’s Apéro, Napa’s Be Bubbly, NYC’s Coqodaq: Top 10 Bars and Restaurants for Champagne from Bureau du Champagne

Napa’s Be Bubbly, NYC’s Coqodaq, DC’s Apéro: Top 10 Bars and Restaurants for Champagne from Bureau du Champagne

From Napa to DC to Manhattan and just 7 other sparkling stops!

Bureau du Champagne, USA today announced its annual list of the Top 10 Bars and Restaurants where Champagne plays a starring role. The list, now in its third year, recognizes establishments that elevate and celebrate the uniqueness of the sparkling wine that comes only from Champagne, France.

Released in advance of Champagne Day 2024, the list showcases Champagne standouts in every U.S. region. It recognizes restaurants and bars that take special care to offer Champagnes from a wide variety of producers, list them properly on their menus, and serve them with élan.

“We received nominations for spectacular bars and restaurants across the country, and selected from them a list of destinations that embody the spirit of Champagne,”

Lori Russo

Director,

the Bureau du Champagne, USA.

“While these restaurants and bars differ in style, spanning the spectrum from fine dining to fried chicken, they all have one thing in common: they understand what makes Champagne special. For that, we couldn’t be prouder to raise a glass to them on Champagne Day and the rest of the year.”

The full list of this year’s featured bars and restaurants can be found below in alphabetical order:

  • ApéroWashington, DC: Apéro’s list of more than 700 wines places special emphasis on Champagne. The intimate setting in DC’s popular Georgetown neighborhood is an ideal spot to explore an extensive list of Champagnes smartly organized by style.
  • Be BubblyNapa, Calif.: In the heart of California wine country, Be Bubbly takes care to showcase Champagne with a menu that includes a map of the region’s five wine-producing districts and a philosophy of Champagne as a celebration of life.
  • Boiler RoomOmaha: The wine list at this terroir-focused restaurant, originally conceived by a Master Sommelier, offers a broad range of Champagnes at varying price points so everyone can join in the celebration.
  • CharlestonBaltimore: The wine program at Charleston emphasizes the special relationship between wine and food. The Champagne list, which spans three pages of its menu, explains the magic of Champagne along with a diversity of tasting profiles.
  • CoqodaqNew York: Proving the versatility of Champagne, Coqodaq pairs the sparkling wine with both caviar and its signature bucket of Korean fried chicken.
  • CoupesDallas: Coupes bills itself as a bar for Champagne. True to its name, its vast menu of Champagnes explains that “Champagne is a sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wines are Champagne.”
  • Fizz Champagne & Bubbles BarSacramento, Calif.: Fizz believes in celebrating everyday triumphs with Champagne. Its menus and events elevate Champagne from France and distinguish it from other sparkling wines.
  • La Vie, Waikiki, Hawaii: La Vie’s emphasizes farm-to-table dining with French flair, so its large selection of vintage and non-vintage Champagnes creates the perfect complement, and the view is special, too.
  • Pops for ChampagneChicago: Known for its special events, tastings, Champagne education and a vast list of Champagnes of every style, Pops has been dazzling Chicago with Champagne since 1982.
  • Sexy FishMiami: The extraordinary interior of this Brickell restaurant is matched only by its extensive list of Champagnes both accessible and rare.

For more information on Champagne Day or to find an event near you, visit champagneday.champagne.fr. More events will be added in the near future, so check back often.

Bureau du Champagne, USA, is the official U.S. representative of the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC), a trade association representing the houses and winegrowers of Champagne, France. The Bureau works to advance the CIVC’s mission of defending the interests of the Champagne appellation worldwide through education and advocacy. For more information, visit us online at www.champagne.us.

DC to TX for Gin: Self-made Billionaire John Paul DeJoria acquires Waterloo Gin

Self-made Billionaire John Paul DeJoria acquires Waterloo Gin

Passionate entrepreneur and philanthropist John Paul DeJoria, the self-made billionaire founder of Patrón Tequila and Paul Mitchell hair care, has announced the purchase of Waterloo Gin, the first gin brand distilled in Texas.

Developed by Treaty Oak Distilling in Dripping Springs, Texas, near Austin, Waterloo Gin was launched in 2009, named after Austin’s original name – Waterloo – before the city was rechristened in the 1830s for Texas pioneer Stephen F. Austin.

Waterloo is known for its exceptional quality, craftsmanship, and unique flavor profile that blends fruits and botanicals that perfectly capture the Texas Hill Country.

The brand’s flagship Waterloo No. 9 Gin (94 proof) is crafted in the New American style, distilled with nine local botanicals including lavender, grapefruit, and pecan. The other expression in the Waterloo portfolio, Waterloo Antique Gin (also 94 proof), spends two years in first-use medium char American white oak barrels, matured under the hot Texas sun to develop rich wood flavors that complement the herbal notes of the base Waterloo No. 9. Both Waterloo Gins are naturally 100% gluten, carb, and additive free.

“Waterloo is an extraordinarily high-quality, innovative and world-class spirit, a gin I’m certain that people will enjoy,” says DeJoria, who founded Patrón Tequila in 1989 and built it into a $5.1 billion business when it was sold to Bacardi in 2018.

“I’m very honored for the opportunity to help grow this incredible brand, and share Waterloo Gin with more bartenders, retailers, and consumers all across the country.”

The company will be led by CEO Justin Meigs, who was previously an original member of the Empress Gin executive team that launched and grew the brand to over 260,000 annual case sales in 5 years, prior to the company’s exit in 2022.

“I’m incredibly excited about this new chapter for the Waterloo brand, now in the capable hands of John Paul DeJoria and his talented team of spirits industry veterans,” says Daniel Barnes, the founder of Waterloo at Treaty Oak. “Their deep industry experience and passion for cultivating and growing brands gives me great confidence that Waterloo will continue to flourish and reach new consumers everywhere.”

Though the recipe, production process, and brand name for Waterloo Gin will not change, the brand packaging and imagery will undergo a comprehensive refresh, with expanded national distribution, early next year.

Currently, Waterloo is available through Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) in Texas and Breakthru Beverage in Florida.

Additionally, customers in other states can purchase Waterloo online at www.waterloogin.com/shop-gin.

DC Seizes Tonight: Larceny Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Larceny Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Launches “Seize Tonight”

Larceny Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey released an engaging new commercial to support the recently launched “Seize Tonight” which encourages fans of Larceny to unleash their carefree spirit and get into some “good mischief”.

The brand will also extend its reach with Community Ambassadors who embody this same spirit in the gaming, music and food scenes to create compelling content which highlights the craftsmanship behind Larceny Bourbon and their respective passions.

Larceny Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Launches "Seize Tonight"

Larceny Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Launches “Seize Tonight” Screenshot

The “Seize Tonight” campaign is centered around the idea that the most memorable moments happen when you let curiosity get the best of you and take a little risk – much like John E. Fitzgerald himself.

On the heels of its successful premium packaging redesign, the brand will debut an engaging new ad on premium streaming platforms directed by award-winning commercial film director André Betz.

The spot shows how Larceny can be the catalyst for turning an ordinary evening into a memorable one.

The hero seizes the opportunity to liven his friends’ night out by playing the piano after seeing a compelling vision of a keyhole ignite on the instrument. The crowd is surprised to hear the piano play, partly because the hero is so good, but also because the piano is clearly off limits. The spot reaches a pivotal moment when the stern bartender walks over to tell off the hero, only to reveal that she’s there to pour him a glass of Larceny in appreciation of his spontaneity.

Both the 30-second video, as well as 15-second version, will be streamed on Connected TV and Online Video.

The “Seize Tonight” campaign’s manifesto will be brought to life by expanding the brand’s reach and appeal beyond the traditional bourbon drinker through influential Community Ambassadors in the gaming, music and food scenes.

LP Giobbi is a celebrated DJ, producer, pianist, and activist, known for her innovative sound and impactful contributions to music and advocacy.

BlackKrystel is a dominant force in in the world of gaming and has made her mark as an efficacious voice for carefree, authentic fun.

Fabrizio Villalpando is a no-holds-barred home cook whose bold attitude towards entertaining through food has left a mark in the culinary scene.

Justin Sajda is a self-described “average guy who makes above average cocktails” whose creative concoctions elevate the spirits he serves behind the bar and on social media where he can be found @thirstywhale_.

Unlike many other bourbons, Larceny is made with wheat instead of the traditional rye, using a mashbill of 68% corn, 20% wheat and 12% malted barley. The use of 20% wheat as the secondary flavor grain is 25% more than the leading competitor, resulting in exceptional smoothness. Larceny Small Batch is available nationwide at a SRP of $27.99 and the new, premium packaging is now shipping. Individual batches of Larceny Barrel Proof are released nationally on an allocated basis three times annually at a SRP of $64.99 and will be bottled in the new packaging starting this fall.

Fans of Larceny are encouraged to enjoy it straight, on the rocks or in the classic Paper Plane cocktail.

ABOUT LARCENY BOURBON

The story of Larceny begins with John E. Fitzgerald, a bonded U.S. Treasury agent with a penchant for thievery of the best Bourbon.

Using his keys to let himself into rickhouses at night, the “Fitzgerald Barrels”, as they came to be known, became one of America’s most beloved whiskeys after Prohibition with the launch of Old Fitzgerald.

Today, the John E. Fitzgerald story continues through Larceny, an incredibly smooth and exceptional small batch Wheated Bourbon. First brought to market in 2012, Larceny is one of the most successful new-to-the-world Bourbons in the past decade.

Produced by Heaven Hill Distillery, the brand offers Larceny Small Batch and Larceny Barrel Proof Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Since its inception, Larceny has been an award-winning, best in class Bourbon receiving accolades such as Double Gold at the 2024 San Francisco World Spirits Competition and Whisky Advocate Whisky of the Year in 2020. F

or more information, please visit www.larcenybourbon.com.

Heaven Hill reminds you to “Think Wisely.  Drink Wisely.”

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