As S.D. hot sauce gets national attention, maker could benefit from big-time visibility

Less than two years ago, Nick Curry was an unemployed writer, unsure if his hot sauce side hustle would be enough to pay for his kids’ Christmas gifts.

Last week, pop superstar Post Malone sampled one of Curry’s  “Halogi” sauces on the wildly popular YouTube show “Hot Ones” and declared it “delicious.”

On Thursday, “Stranger Things” actress Millie Bobby Brown will try Curry’s sauce – if she makes it that far in the show, which runs celebrities through a gamut of ever-hotter sauces to test their toughness.

The 36-year-old Brookings man is just the latest in a string of eastern South Dakota culinary artisans whose work has garnered high-profile media attention over the past year. 

Curry’s rise may have been faster than some of his contemporaries, but his experience mirrors the others in one obvious way: Curry didn’t find the national stage. The national stage found him.

Halogi’s “Tyrfing’s Curse,” was chosen based on a recommendation from Ed Currie, the inventor of the Carolina Reaper hot pepper, with whom Curry had contracted in 2021 to source peppers for his growing business. Without Curry’s knowledge, Currie passed the sauce along to Heatonist, the online store that doubles as the official “Hot Ones” sauce clearinghouse. Six months after an initial call from Heatonist representatives in 2021 about Halogi’s potential placement on the site as an off-show inventory item, Curry and his business partner got a second call.

“They said, ‘Well, let’s cut to the chase: we want you for Season 18,’” said Curry, who spent more than a year sending out resumes between batches of hot sauce before finally securing another writing job in 2021. “I about fell out of my chair … getting on the ‘Hot Ones’ table, that’s like getting to the Super Bowl.”

The owners of Look’s Marketplace and Bread & Circus Sandwich Kitchen, two of the Sioux Falls restaurants featured on an episode of Guy Fieri’s Food Network show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” last year, had similar stories. The producers sought them out. Last spring, a correspondent with “Good Morning America” reached out to Lawrence West, the co-owner of Watecha Bowl, whose Indian tacos were featured recently in the online outlets Atlas Obscura and Thrillist,, and in American Airlines’ in-flight magazine.

It’s not as though Sioux Falls has never hit the national food scene, of course. Sanaa Abourezk of the 8th Street institution Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet competed against the Food Network’s Bobby Flay in a cook-off in 2016, for example. 

Even so, the spike in attention over the past year and a half is noteworthy. Beau Vondra, a partner in Look’s Marketplace and co-owner of Sioux Falls-based Dagger & Arrow hot sauce, sees it as proof of something diners in Sioux Falls have come to understand themselves in recent years: The state’s restaurant scene truly has come into its own.

“Since I moved back (from the Twin Cities) about 15 years ago, people have started doing really interesting things,” Vondra said. “We have some of the most talented people, not just in the state, but in the country.”

‘Eternally grateful’ for slot on YouTube show

Curry hadn’t been unemployed since age 14 when the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest in the U.S. in March 2020. The company he’d worked for remotely as a technical writer for years laid him off and left him adrift. 

“It was a pretty dramatic shift,” Curry recalls. “I started looking for work everywhere.”

He learned during interviews that he was overqualified for several positions, and his options for writing work were slim – especially at the local level. He spent plenty of time sending out resumes – he’d keep doing so for more than a year before finding another full-time job – but he also had free time on his hands for the first time in years. He used it to lean into his hot sauce hobby. His wife bought him a kit on Father’s Day that year, which he used to whip up a batch for a birthday party. A positive response there prompted him to start concocting larger batches to sell.

“It went from a bottle here and there, to a few bottles a month, to December (2020), where we were doing 500 bottles a month,” he said.

Even so, there was a moment of existential dread between the first 100-bottle month and December, as Curry looked at his Ninja blender and a case of empty bottles. He had no idea if he’d be able to fill those bottles and sell them. He was picturing a spare Christmas season and budget cutbacks for the whole family on either side of it.

“We’ve definitely had our highs and lows,” he said.

He’d christened his hot sauce company Halogi, by late 2020, a tongue-in-cheek nod to the oddity of a hot sauce made in the frigid northern Great Plains. Halogi is a mythical Norse fire giant who brings heat to the similarly frigid northern regions of Europe. Each sauce is named for Norse mythology.

Early on in 2021, he partnered with businessman Luke Davidson with an eye to expansion. The reviews online were positive, and customers were posting recipes that featured his sauces. It was that expansion mode that ultimately led to Halogi’s “Hot Ones” attention.

The pair reached out to Puckerbutt Pepper Co. because they were struggling to keep up with demand using their typical sources. Company founder Ed Currie’s renown in the hot sauce world came through the Carolina Reaper hot pepper, and the company’s sauces had appeared on the show. The founder recommended Tyrfing’s Curse to Heatonist, and everything fell into place.

Curry was in disbelief when he got the second call. He was happy enough to be listed on Heatonist and hadn’t expected a shot at the show.

“At one point we asked them point blank: Are we being taken advantage of?” he said. “But they just kept coming back to the flavor profile.”

The show’s producers were rather surprised, as well, Curry said. They kept asking how they knew Ed Currie. Curry and Davidson kept telling them they barely knew him at all.

“We were handed ‘Hot Ones,’” and we’ll be eternally grateful for that,” he said. 

For a hot sauce maker, the selection is quite the gift. “Hot Ones” has become a cultural touchpoint whose appeal reaches well beyond spicy food fans.

The show’s charm is simple: Celebrities sit across a table from host Sean Evans and sample progressively spicier hot sauces, answering questions between each bite. Over the course of each 25-minute show, the carefully curated cool of the celebrity brand inevitably fades in the face of genuine physical pain, with Evans asking his guests ever more probing questions as they writhe in hilarious agony.

With any luck, viewers will see Gordon Ramsay dousing his mouth with lemon juice between bouts of cursing invective or Trevor Noah coughing himself into a case of the hiccups.

For sauce makers who make the cut for a “Hot Ones” season, the reward is even sweeter. Heatonist sells a full flight of sauces for each season for $120, encouraging fans to play along with their favorite celebrities at home. The site also sells individual sauces and groups show selections in three-bottle sets based on heat. 

Curry and Davidson expect they’ll need to hire more help to manage the demand.

“As our customer base expands, we’re going to want to hire people here in South Dakota,” Curry said. 

‘Good for Sioux Falls’ no longer 

A win for the Brookings startup is a win for South Dakota, at least according to Vondra.

He has heard plenty of praise and detraction for South Dakota’s culinary options over the years. He grew up here, after all. As a youngster, local options often were limited to chain restaurants.

That has changed lately. Chains are still a powerful force in the local market, but it has expanded thanks to population growth and an influx of new and returning talent. 

At this point, Vondra sees the descriptor “good for Sioux Falls” as damning with faint praise. It’s also inaccurate, he said, based on his experience cooking in the Twin Cities and eating all over the U.S.

“I’m just so impressed by everything we have going on now,” Vondra said.

Local restaurants sourcing with local ingredients, food trucks and produce growers hopping from farmers market to farmers market up and down Interstate 29, breweries and bakeries – all of it has become a part of life for southeastern South Dakotans.

There’s no envy on Vondra’s part over “Hot Ones,” either. Mutual support is a feature of the food scene in the area, he said, in part because at this point, any attention garnered by a regional outfit ultimately helps tell the story of the state’s burgeoning talent. 

“For those guys, it’s just unbelievable for their business,” he said. “Anyone who’s in the same business I’m in, I’m glad to see them succeed. A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Bread & Circus co-owner Jordan Taylor largely echoed Vondra’s sentiments. The Sioux Falls native honed his craft outside of Sioux Falls, in his case in Portland, Oregon. He and his Roosevelt High School classmate Barry Putzke moved back to town five years ago. 

“When Barry and I moved back, we didn’t do it to cater to the palates of the people here,” Taylor said. “We came back to push the envelope.”

The duo began with Bread & Circus, but recently founded Pizza Cheeks, whose flavors are available at The Hello Hi bar on Phillips Avenue. 

“When we nailed the Pizza Cheeks recipe, we said: ‘This is great. It’s great anywhere,” Taylor said. 

That didn’t mean there weren’t lean times for Taylor and Putzke. The sandwich shop struggled at first. In early 2019, Taylor remembers telling Putzke he needed to think about the future.

“I didn’t have a dime to my name,” Taylor said. “I was like ‘man, I just can’t.’”

Bread & Circus got a jolt from the 2019 inaugural concert season at the nearby Levitt Shell, but then the pandemic hit. After a few months closed, the shop opened back up to “a ton of support.”

“Then Guy (Fieri) came,” Taylor said. 

The two-day “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” shoot involved some intense preparation, but Taylor’s experience with Fieri was positive from start to finish. The Food Network star was professional, personable and direct, with a confidence that helped ease Taylor’s nerves.

The results from the show’s 2021 airing were pretty dramatic for a shop whose future felt uncertain a few years ago, Taylor said.

“We basically doubled our business,” he said.“There are a lot of people who travel the circuit. They get out and eat at all the ‘Triple D’ restaurants.”

Building their own brand

West’s experience in the national spotlight played out a little differently, at least on the bottom line side of the equation. He did see new faces after his “Good Morning America” appearance, but devoted customers and a growing social media fan base have driven Watecha Bowl’s growth.

In truth, West said, it’s the positive reviews and fan following that put the shop on the media radar.

“When the media comes to us, it’s not to help us out,” West said. “We have our own marketing and our own following. … We’re always glad to have it, but we don’t rely on it. We have regular customers that come here three or four times a week, and they have since we opened.”

Of course, a slot on “Good Morning America” isn’t quite as impactful for a business as product placement in a $120 hot sauce box set or an appearance on a food show whose fans travel the country to sample the meals they saw on television. 

But West’s story – that Watecha has built its business from the ground up through good food and customer service – is really at the heart of why the national attention is meaningful for the food scene. It means the city’s chefs are doing work worth noticing.

West and his wife, co-owner Sophie West, work 80 to 100 hours some weeks but still make time to sample food from their fellow local chefs. It’s a matter of respect and support for the community of cuisine they’re proud to be a part of, he said.

“We need that,” he said. “We need that authentic food culture. We deserve to set that standard because there’s culinary greatness everywhere.”

The mechanics of supply and demand and the economics of a business with traditionally low profit margins can spell trouble for even the most talented chefs – not every Guy Fieri selection in the Sioux Falls area saw huge profits and one even went out of business – but no amount of marketing can rescue a restaurant whose food doesn’t deliver, West said.

If the first episode of “Hot Ones” Season 18 is any indication, Halogi passes the smell test. 

Two days before the Post Malone episode aired, Curry told Pigeon605 that Tyrfing’s Curse is a slow burner of a sauce, one whose bright, sunny notes of ginger and citrus land mildly. The heat from the first bite, he said, lands around the time you take the second bite.

“It’s a sleeper. … I don’t feel it,” a confident Post Malone said after his first bite on the season premiere. “It’s not that bad. It is delicious.”

One minute later, the star stopped mid-answer, pulled his fist to his mouth and cocked his head to his right.

“Jesus … it’s there,” he said. “It’s still reminding me. It’s reminding me.”

“I think it heard you talking,” Evans said.

“Exactly!” the rapper replied. “It heard me talking sh*t.”

The guest continued answering Evans’ question, but Tyrfing’s Curse didn’t let up. 

“That’s so random, what is wrong with me?” he said, unsatisfied with his word selection. “This sauce is hacking my brain.”

The episode’s title? “Post Malone Has His Brain Hacked By Spicy Wings.”

Curry couldn’t have been more pleased.

“It was incredible hearing him say it was delicious, and a smidge vindicating to see it sneak back up on him after claiming an early victory,” he said.