Blog Post #6: Chicago's Mild Sauce

Before I went to Chicago for spring break, I asked a friend – a Chicago native –  for some uniquely Chicago things to do and see during my trip. The very first thing she told me was “mild sauce.” Curious, I’d begun to seek out mild sauce as soon as I arrived in Chicago and needed dinner, and it wasn’t at all hard to find. I ate at Harold’s Chicken Shack (also recommended by my friend) and asked the cashier for extra mild sauce. When I got my food, I noticed a couple things: first, that the sauce wasn’t in a little cup beside my food, but instead was slathered on in a way that made my hands completely sticky; second, that it was rather sweet, a little spicy, and very delicious.

Wondering about who and what made up mild sauce, I did some research, and found that the sauce had multiple origin stories. It was possibly invented in Chicago buy any of a long list of restaurants in the South and West Sides which claim to be its creator; it was maybe discovered by a customer who’d dared to mix ketchup and barbecue sauce for their chicken or shrimp; and it could have been brought up to Chicago from somewhere in the Deep South during the Great Migration.

Whichever origin story might be true, what I found to be interesting is a comment made by Charmaine Rickette, the CEO of the fried chicken restaurant, Uncle Remus. Rickette claimed, “Mild sauce was not mild sauce until we created it,” when referring to the possibility that customers might’ve first mixed up the sauce on their own before the original owners of Uncle Remus started selling it. In this sense, Uncle Remus promotes the idea that mild sauce wasn’t “mild sauce” until a business (i.e. them) took part in legitimating it, since the sauce then became standardized.

Another interesting thing about mild sauce is the recipe. Although dozens of different restaurants around Chicago serve it and it varies a little from place to place, mild sauce is consistently a mixture of ketchup, barbecue sauce, and hot sauce. This might reflect a few things about the Chicago culture and people who embrace it. First, that the sauce isn’t fancy, but is instead for the working class: all its ingredients are common and unpretentious. This can also be seen in the way that the sauce is slathered onto the chicken or shrimp, and not instead in a dipping cup beside the meal. Second, that the sauce’s predominant sweet flavor is much stronger than its spicy flavor, possibly meaning that the sauce and those who enjoy it might have cultural roots in places that had an appreciation for spicy food, like the Deep South (which would make sense, given the Great Migration origin story), but have since had their palates adjusted for milder flavor because of the milder food typical of the Midwest.

Finally, of the restaurants in Chicago that are most popular for their mild sauce (e.g., Uncle Remus, Harold’s Chicken Shack, Lem’s BBQ House, Uncle John’s Barbeque, Coleman’s BBQ), it can be seen, from the establishments’ names, that mild sauce is most often an eating ritual among certain demographics – notably African American people, since these restaurants belong to barbecue or soul food traditions. Uncle Remus, for example, was a prominent fictional character in African-American folktales in the late 19th century – and each of the other restaurants’ names mention either barbecue or chicken, possibly as an indication of the restaurants’ roots in southern cooking.

So, mild sauce, as a food event, has been legitimated and constructed by multiple businesses since it was first possibly concocted by an inventive customer. And the sauce says a lot about the people in Chicago who eat it – namely, that they: are probably unpretentious, enjoy southern food, and like to hold back a little on the spice – but have great taste nonetheless.



Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/ct-mild-sauce-hearken-food-0628-story.html