Captain Thom's - Thai Monkey
N/A 1 REVIEW
Maker:
Captain Thom's Chili Pepper Co.
Baltimore, MD, United States
Pepper(s):
Thai
Ingredients:
Teriyaki Sauce (soy Sauce, Sugar, Sherry Wine, Corn Syrup, Pineapple Juice, Distilled Vinegar, Corn Starch, Burgundy Wine, Pineapple Juice Powder, Salt, Garlic Powder, Caramel Color, Potassium Sorbate, Water, Natural Flavors), Pineapple Juice, Water, Onion, Spices, Wasabi, Thai Peppers, Peanut Butter (roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Partially Hydrated Vegetable Oils, Salt), Garlic.
Description:
Official: "Captain Thom and the crew, after fishing along the Great Barrier Reef, made a stop in Thailand, to sample some of the hot and spicy Thai food. Over hearing a story from one of the local street vendors about a Mystic Book of Recipes. We made an excursion into the interior jungle, where we found the legendary Monkey King and the rare book. The monkey king was so impressed by our love of spicy foods that he presented us with this mystical book. This hot sauce is a product of that book."User Reviews
The opinions expressed in these reviews are soley those of their author.
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F0.9
Reviewed by andwich on November 12th, 2020
Label:
Great example of a bad label. In barely big enough to be legible font, the whole premise of the design relies on a hokey gimmick built on a fictional backstory, a journey to Thailand to be gifted the recipe from the Monkey King. Spare me. I question everything about the info on this label including the Nutrition facts. One ingredient is listed as "partially HYDRATED vegetable oils", that's not a thing. You mean "HYDROGENATED"? It should have been a red flag that the ingredients listed have more ingredients than the actual sauce, mainly teriyaki sauce and peanut butter. But, when the ingredients IN the ingredients are broken down, they include interesting elements, like sherry, pineapple juice, and burgundy. Unfortunately, it also reveals the addition of less desirable things like the preservative potassium sorbate, caramel color, "natural flavors", the aforementioned "hydrated" vegetable oils, and the puzzlingly ambiguous "spices". Worst of all, the website on the label doesn't exist.
Looks:
A gritty blackish brown color gives this sauce the unappealing appearance of used motor oil. The consistency, after shaking the separated contents of the bottle, is runny and the texture is gritty and not homogenous. Even after shaking this sauce, it just seems like a bunch of dry spices suspended in old teriyaki sauce.
Aroma:
The best way I can think to describe the aroma of this sauce is that it is similar to an old expired bottle of sauce you find in your pantry, but you open it and give it a sniff to see if it still usable. (Literal "SPOILER" alert - it is usable, but it will ruin the taste of whatever you put it on) The forwards notes are the syrupy sweetness of molasses and the anisette tones of allspice or clove.
Taste:
I think the flavor of this sauce would actually offend a real Thai person. It's doesn't taste like anything Thai, or hot sauce, or even a teriyaki sauce. Due to the apparent use of inferior ingredients, this sauce suffers from a not-fresh, old, muddy, syrupy taste. Take that Chinese five spice powder that you used once from out of the back of your spice collection and mix it with expired teriyaki sauce, and voila, you have Thai Monkey.
Heat:
It does have a little back of the throat after-burn, but not a good one. At first the heat is obscured by all the muddy syrupy sweetness, but then it kind of makes you choke a little when the spice is left to coat your tonsils.
Overall:
So far, this is the worst sauce I have ever tried. I really don't like to trash people's efforts to be creative, but this is literally trash, I'm throwing it away. The only thing that would make it worse is if it made me vomit. Well, while it's not putrid, it's definitely not something I want in my mouth ever again. At first the exotic undertones where somewhat intriguing, so I tasted it over and over in an attempt to find redeeming qualities so that I could at least like it a little and say something positive about it. After all, I did pay actual money for this stuff. I can't imagine any scenario in which I would want to put this on something, unless maybe I was forced to eat a shoe. GOOD riddance.