Chelas Chile La Original, Sabor a Mí, La Macha & The Crunch

The fastest, most crazy roller coaster we’ve ever ridden in terms of chili oil.

Chelas Chile is a small-batch Mexican chili oil brand out of Riverside, California. Laura, the founder, named it after her mom, Chela, who taught her to cook — every recipe is made in her memory, with all Mexican chilies and pure olive oil. We met Laura at Smorgasburg LA after this review and the story is as good as the sauce.

The lineup

La Original — olive oil, dried chili, salt, garlic. Four ingredients. It pours like lava: about 80% finely-ground chile mixture to 20% oil. At first there’s a slight sweetness, then it punches you in the gut with chile flavor and lingers on your tongue. We scored the heat around 8.5/10 — try a little first, because a little goes a long way.

Sabor a Mí — the same base plus sugar and aromatics, darker and smoother. Lickable-spoon addictive, with the spice dialed down to a 5–6. If you want the flavor without the fight, start here.

La Macha — the chunky one. Four kinds of chilies, peanuts, and — we couldn’t believe it either — tortillas fried into the mix. It eats like a dark-roasted salsa with deep toasty flavor. The peanuts win you over instantly.

The Crunch — a dry topping of garlic chunks, dried chilies, and salt. We’d eat it like popcorn. Actually, put it on popcorn.

Should you buy it?

Between the four products you have a near-infinite combination of flavors to amp up any dish. Everything is packaged beautifully and feels genuinely gourmet — this is the jar we hand people when they say salsa macha can’t hang with chili crisp.

How to get it: Chelas Chile sells at pop-ups around LA and the Inland Empire and takes orders through Instagram DM at @chelaschile. That’s not a bug — that’s what supporting a one-woman brand looks like.