Mild Sauce, Fried Hard

Local food writer and friend of the site David Hammond started a discussion on his Facebook page recently, talking about an article recently published on Block Club Chicago about “That Mild Sauce,” a condiment being sold by a new company out of the Lincoln Park neighborhood on the north side of Chicago.

Mild sauce, though, is a west side and a south side phenomenon in Chicago. Served at a variety of establishments–fish and shrimp houses, chicken shacks, barbecue joints, sandwich shops, basically any place where you can order fried foods down to and including French fries–mild sauce has been a favorite at restaurants serving African-American neighborhoods since the 1950s. There, it is ubiquitous. Hannibal Buress, from the West side’s Austin neighborhood, has written of its glory, as has Nate Marshall, South side poet and playwright. Chicago kids have recorded songs about it.

Harold’s Chicken Shack, a South side fried chicken chain, originally opened in 1950 as H&H selling dumplings and chicken feet, though it’s unclear when they pivoted to fried chicken and mild sauce. The West side’s Uncle Remus Saucy Fried Chicken opened in 1963 as G&G Chicken, then Royal Chicken, eventually taking the Uncle Remus name after a fire during 1968’s riots destroyed a location and they got a deal on an already-made sign. Argia B’s Bar-B-Que House, opened on the South side in the early 50s, was a barbecue place, but made a mild and sweet barbecue sauce called Mumbo sauce that was popular enough to outlast the restaurant and is still sold today. (Washington, DC has a similar relationship with a condiment called Mumbo sauce that Chicago has with mild sauce, but Argia B’s brand appears to be closer to the Chicago-style mild sauce than to DC’s Mumbo, which is described as similar to Chinese sweet-and-sour sauce and is often found in Chinese restaurants)

At these restaurants, you can get your mild sauce on the side if you ask. The default, though, the intended use for the sauce is to be applied to your food before it’s given to you, whether you’re getting it to eat in or to take with you. They’ll put it on the fried chicken, and it’ll slowly soften the crisp crust and soak in. They’ll do the same with fried fish or fried shrimp. They’ll put it on your fries–they’ll take that paper bag or boat, drop it into a slightly larger paper sack, then invert the sauce bottle directly over the end of the open bag and douse the fries in it. They don’t ask you what you want “with” your fries or chicken. They ask you what you want *on* it.

The sauce itself is variable–some combination of BBQ sauce, ketchup, hot sauce, perhaps some Worcestershire or additional sugar–and while some chains may distribute their own centrally manufactured versions of it, other shops will make it in-house at individual locations. The mild sauce you get one day at one place is unlikely to be the same as the mild sauce you get somewhere else the next day.

So the question the article poses is, Who Owns Mild Sauce? If someone is going to bottle it and sell it and make unknown units of dollars from it (I have no idea how much money the guys at That Mild Sauce have made, though they say it’s been selling well), shouldn’t it be someone in one of the communities that mild sauce comes from, rather than an outsider? They quote several accusations of appropriation and also present the opposing view that anyone in the African American community could also have bottled and sold their own sauce at any point over the past several decades. They don’t, however, really address the idea that privilege means having the resources to exploit an opening like this, privilege that might be more common among white folks in Lincoln Park than among those queued up at their local Shark’s for catfish nuggets and fries.

I am not the guy to answer that question, though. I’m just a fat idiot who likes eating.

I like mild sauce. I’m usually more of a fan of hot sauce on my chicken, but an experience in St. Louis last summer reminded me of the glories of fried chicken wings glazed with sticky sauce. Since then, I’ve had plenty of chicken with mild sauce instead, and I’ve always gotten it on my fries whenever I can. I’ve had mild sauce at Harold’s and Uncle Remus, I get it whenever I go to Super Steak in Harvey or Baba’s Steak & Lemonade anywhere, I’ve had it at Nicky’s and Stoney Sub and a bunch of other south side places. I didn’t grow up with it, but I appreciate it. I’ve noticed differences from place to place, but hadn’t ever really tried to suss out what those differences are before.

So I went out and acquired a bottle of That Mild Sauce at the Strack and Van Til grocery chain where it’s carried, as well as styrofoam tubs of mild sauce from both Uncle Remus and Harold’s. I picked up a bottle of Argia B’s Mumbo Sauce as well. I managed to get it all together on a weekend when all three of my kids were at home and we tried them all in order to provide our unscientific, inauthentic, and likely unwelcome opinion on them.

The Contenders

Uncle Remus

West side favorite Uncle Remus doesn’t bottle their sauce but they’ll sell it by the 16oz tub at the restaurant. I picked this up at the 47th St. Bronzeville location but it’s my understanding that the sauce is centrally made and consistent across locations.

Harold’s

South Side institution Harold’s Chicken Shack is my go-to for fried chicken, and while the sauce can be variable from location to location, this small tub of sauce from the Matteson site is very close to what I think of when I hear mild sauce.

Argia B’s Mumbo Sauce

The venerable BBQ sauce that has outlived the restaurant where it was born, and possibly spread its fame to Washington DC as well. Though it is not nominally a mild sauce, it belongs in this company.

That Mild Sauce

The upstart startup from the North side currently causing controversy. Calling it “That Mild Sauce” during the ensuing discussion turned out to be awkward and unclear. I’d like to avoid similar ambiguity here. We will thus use the same workaround that occurred during that discussion by referring to this solely as “White Boy Sauce” from this point forward. This should be good, right? It is the sauce of my people.

The Platforms

Harold’s Chicken Shack “bucket” of wings

Generally speaking, an order of chicken from Harold’s is served thus: a slice of squishy white bread is placed into a paper boat before fries and then chicken are laid thereon. Mild or hot sauce is generously distributed over both chicken and fries, after which a small paper condiment cup containing approximately a thimbleful of coleslaw is added as well. The whole is covered in wax paper then stuffed sideways into a paper sack along with a plastic fork and a small number of nearly useless napkins.

However, when one orders a bucket of chicken, one gets a catering tray covered in aluminum foil (perforated so as not to allow steam to make the breading soggy). Bread, fries, and other accompaniments are out. This is all about the chicken. They still ask you what you want on it though.

One of the things that’s great about Harold’s chicken, and from my experience at Uncle Remus I’d say it’s true there as well, is that their fried chicken is not made ahead of time only to lie on a rack under a heat lamp until it’s ordered. The chicken is fried after you order it, which isn’t fast, but means when they tuck the end of that paper bag closed and hand you your order, that chicken is *hot* and fresh. No sauce on this order. We were on a mission

Harold’s Chicken Shack Family Size fries

Harold’s fries are, generally speaking, not very good. They are not the star of this show, and they don’t get attention lavished on them the way that diva chicken does. They can vary from location to location as well, but these were fairly typical for Harold’s fries. Slightly on the thick side, cooked decently well but just shy of crisp enough to take all the sauce they’re going to get on them. It pays to remember to ask for your fries “fried hard.” I did not remember.

The Showdown

This was not a scientific trial, no blind tests, no control, no rules really. I let everybody serve the wings, fries, and sauce in whatever way worked for them. As for myself, I placed 4 wings around the periphery of my plate with fries in the center

Then I dressed each wing with one of the sauces, letting it spill over onto the fries. Once the sauces are on the wings, in the bright sunlight of the window, the differences in color and consistency appear minor. Clockwise from the bottom of this image we have Uncle Remus, Harold’s, White Boy Sauce, and Mumbo sauce.

Everybody had their own method. Damian tried each of the sauces on a wing, then tried each of them on a couple of fries, never having more than a bite or two of food on their plate at any given time. Max tried the bottled sauces, then the sauces in styrofoam. Ian randomly came back into the room grabbing more chicken and sauce–I’m not sure if he tried all of them or not. Mindy smelled each of the sauces, then elected to only use Mumbo sauce.

Uncle Remus is a very sweet sauce, thick and sticky and a little smokey, with a slight acidic brightness and a small amount of spice hitting at the back of the throat but not lingering.

Harold’s sauce, while still sweet, is far more acidic and less sweet than Uncle Remus, though similarly thick and sticky. The spice hits in the center of the tongue, more of a black pepper type of heat. It has the kind of flavor that I’m looking for when I think about mild sauce.

The White Boy Sauce has a way more prominent flavor and aroma of hot sauce than any of the others, and though it is not particularly spicy it is the spiciest of these mild sauces. The aroma is of hot sauce and corn syrup, the flavor is hot sauce and ketchup, maybe a little brown sugar/molasses/barbecue sauce, but the balance is far more toward acidic than sweet, with spice hitting both on the tongue and at the back of the throat, lingering slightly.

The Argia B’s sauce is a sweeter BBQ sauce as well, with a more complex, herby flavor than Uncle Remus’ sauce. Max noted an herbal flavor he didn’t like that was right at the center of the Mumbo sauce’s profile, but couldn’t identify it. Something minty he thought? It took me a day before I realized–that’s celery. There is a big hit of celery in the Mumbo sauce, and once I recognized it I couldn’t taste anything else when I tried it. There is very little spice in the Mumbo sauce, and a lot of flavor, but most of it is celery.

Damian posited a spectrum for the mild sauces, with Sweet Baby Ray’s at one end and Open Pit at the other. In this model, Uncle Remus and Mumbo would be toward the Sweet Baby Ray’s end of the spectrum, and Harold’s and White Boy Sauce would be on the Open Pit end. Of course there’s more to it than that but it’s certainly possible that these two commercial BBQ sauces are the basis for the mild sauces available at many of Chicago’s fast food restaurants. Overall, Damian liked the Mumbo sauce quite a bit but found that the similarity of White Boy Sauce to straight-up Louisiana Hot Sauce made it their favorite, especially on cheap frozen pizza.

Ian’s favorite was the Mumbo sauce, which of course was the mildest of the mild sauces we tried, having almost no chili or black pepper heat. He liked the Uncle Remus and Harold’s sauces to some extent as well. But he didn’t like the White Boy Sauce at all, saying it tasted too much like hot sauce.

Max did not care for the Mumbo sauce at all, having picked up on the celery flavor before any of us, though he could not articulate what it was he didn’t like about it. Mindy, on the other hand, would only use the Mumbo sauce, also citing the White Boy Sauce’s smell as being just like hot sauce.

As for me, I’m hardly unbiased, and when it comes to it, my favorite of the sauces is unsurprisingly the Harold’s sauce. It has that Open Pit/Arby’s sauce flavor that you want to mix horseradish sauce into and douse a roast beef sandwich with, but works just as nicely over fried chicken wings. To be honest though, I mostly only order mild sauce on my fries, and I’d take any of these, up to and including the White Boy Sauce, on an order of fries if that was what was available.

If I were going to rank them in order of preference, it’d go something like this

1. Harold’s
2. Uncle Remus
3. Mumbo
4. White Boy

Uncle Remus is sweeter than I’d like, but there’s a decent bit of acidity to back that up, and a little bit of heat. Though that celery flavor in the Mumbo sauce has thrown me for a loop now that I notice it’s there, I like that there’s something going on with it other than just sweetness. As for White Boy Sauce, man I like Louisiana Hot Sauce more than just about anything, but if that’s the flavor I want on my chicken I’ll just use that, y’know? But it’s not bad really, and it’d scratch the itch if I didn’t have any of the others available.