Boon Sauce Original & Vegan Sauce

Boon equals flavor, and every batch is a little bit different.

Boon Sauce is one of LA’s most talked-about small-batch chili sauces, and one of the first jars that made us understand the hype economy around local chili oil. We bought batch #29 at Now Serving, the cookbook store in Chinatown. Boon numbers every batch, and each one is slightly different. Even if you’ve tried it before, you haven’t tried every Boon.

The taste test

It’s pastier than most chili crisps: the spoon cuts through like a thick sambal. It doesn’t smell aggressive, then the heat creeps up fast. Good spice, big flavor. One heads-up: the OG recipe contains anchovies. We don’t really taste them as “fishy” (they just read as depth), but if you’re sensitive to it, that’s what that is.

Boon Vegan

Boon later released a vegan version, which Boon sent us to try. Honestly? If we tried it blind, we wouldn’t have known it was vegan. The fermented turnip does the umami heavy lifting, there’s crisp all over it, and it has a proper kick: we’d call it a 3/5 heat, a notch milder than the OG. On mushrooms or fried rice it’s perfect. Boon goes to dynamite.

Verdict

S-tier family. The umami is the point here: this is the jar for people who want savory depth more than pure fire. Around $18–24 depending on where you catch it.

Where to buy: boonsauce.com, or Now Serving LA if you want the in-person batch-number experience.

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