Back in 2011, shortly after taking ownership of the 100-year-old Nom Wah Tea Parlor, Wilson Tang wanted to sell jars of branded chile oil. But his first batch did not meet the labeling requirements for bottled products according to the Department of Health, and he shelved the idea in order to focus on the restaurant’s bread and butter: in-house diners.
Nearly 10 years later, Tang came back around to the idea. “We had everything ready to launch right before we closed up operations for COVID-19,” says Tang. He released Nom Wah’s first batch of chile oil on the restaurant’s webstore, and it sold out within hours. Once operations are back up and running, Tang hopes to sell the product again, in Nom Wah restaurants and online.
Today, he finds himself in the company of other restaurants and small businesses selling a signature bright vermilion, sediment-thick chile oil. Tang says he was even inspired by fellow young, New York-based entrepreneurs, including Eric Sze of 886 and Lucas Sin of Junzi Kitchen, who each offer branded chile oil that was for sale in their restaurants’ physical locations before they closed to in-house diners due to the coronavirus. (Sze Daddy, the chile oil from 886, was available online but has sold out; Junzi’s chile oil can still be purchased online.) San Francisco’s acclaimed Chinese restaurant Mr. Jiu’s has its own Chile Crisp Sauce, part of a lineup of sauces in partnership with Williams-Sonoma. Jason Wang, owner of the New York City chain Xi’an Famous Foods, which specializes in the cuisine of the western Chinese province of Shaanxi, also recently began to sell signature chile oil packets, by popular demand.
“I saw someone drinking it once,” says Wang, of his chile oil, before he made the decision to sell the packets separately. “People were saying, ‘I’m going to send this to my friend across the country.’” All locations of Xi’an Famous Foods are currently closed due to the coronavirus, but the chile oil can still be purchased online.
None of these business owners could have predicted that their chile oils would become vestiges of an experience that’s no longer available — dining at their establishment — for the lucky customers who bought them. They were intended to leave visitors with a lingering aftertaste and remind them to come back soon. According to Sze, who estimates that 886 sold about 60 jars per week when it was open, “A lot of people finish their meal and are like, ‘I’ll take a jar.’”
Now, as the timeline for reopening remains blurry, retail items from restaurants have become a hot ticket, and shelf-stable chile oils have been anointed a pandemic pantry must-have for those longing to give their home-cooked creations a whiff of spicy-restaurant nostalgia. But what is chile oil? What does it have to do with “chile crisp”? And why is everyone seemingly crazy for spicy, chunky, oily hot sauce in the first place?
When it comes to chile oil — or “chile crisp” — the first thing that pops into many people’s minds nowadays is Lao Gan Ma, a mass-produced, Chinese brand of chile sauce that’s gained a cult following in the United States. Inexpensive and widely available, its Spicy Chili Crisp condiment in particular — which some fans simply call Lao Gan Ma — is so popular that it’s increasingly seen as a benchmark for oil-based chile condiments, and the prototype that some restaurants have looked to to set their versions against. “Lao Gan Ma has too much of a monopoly. We wanted to offer something a little different,” says Sze.
However, there is some confusion over what exactly “chile crisp” means, and if it’s an entirely different type of product from chile oil, or a variation. “I’ve actually had Chinese friends who were like, ‘What’s chile crisp? Oh, it’s chile oil?’” says Lisa Cheng-Smith, founder of Yun Hai, an exporter of small-batch sauces from Taiwan. A condiment from a small Sichuan-Taiwanese maker called Su Spicy Chili Crisp was the first product available through her ecommerce business, and its best-seller. And while it’s been made for generations, Cheng-Smith gave it a new, English name for its U.S. debut. “I didn’t start calling it ‘chile crisp’ until I started selling it. I always just called it ‘chile oil,’” says Cheng-Smith.
“Lao Gan Ma has five different products, and only one is called Spicy Chili Crisp,” says Jenny Gao, founder of Fly By Jing, a brand of Sichuan ingredients with a signature product called Sichuan Chili Crisp. She says that she was taking cues from other references of the term “chili crisp” when she decided to name her product Sichuan Chili Crisp — in particular, a recipe for chile crisp in the Mission Chinese Food cookbook, published in 2015. That recipe, by Danny Bowien and Chris Ying, is inspired by Lao Gan Ma, “our favorite brand of the stuff,” the authors write. But it’s also a two-part recipe for “Chili Crisp and Chili Oil,” whereby the latter is produced simply by straining out the solids from the infused oil.
Products called “chile crisp” as opposed to chile oil typically have a higher ratio of particles in them than oil. Those particles are the chile flakes (and often garlic, shallots and any number of other ingredients and spices) that are sizzled in the oil to infuse it, becoming crispy in the process. This textural component is what many find irresistible about Sichuan Chili Crisp, Spicy Chili Crisp, and similar high-particle oils. They’re also typically seasoned with salt, soy sauce, MSG, and occasionally fish sauce or other savory agents like fermented black beans.