Saucy Protein Selections

In the days of the Roman Empire, sauces often disguised the flavor of subpar—and sometimes spoiled—meats, poultry and seafood. Of course, the food industry has come a long way since then. Today’s sauces not only accent the flavor of various proteins, but they add considerable interest overall, often helping sway indecisive diners.

“Sauces can help sell an item,” says John Radcliff, director of research and development, Hops Grillhouse and Brewery and Don Pablo’s. “Take grilled chicken—well, grilled chicken with what? Everyone’s going to grill a piece of chicken. What’s going to sell it?” The answer is “a cool sauce,” he says. “I think sauces are a more-important part of the dining experience today than they may have been in the past.”

For many product developers at the nation’s top-200 restaurant chains, sauces have become a key method of upping sales. The right sauce, or perhaps even a selection of sauces, perfectly paired with the protein it accompanies, can turn an ordinary item into something extraordinary.

SAUCIOLOGY 

Data compiled by Food Beat, Inc., Wheaton, IL, shows an astonishing variety of sauces appearing on the menus of the top-200 chains as of the first half of 2007. A review of the Food Beat data, pairing sauces with proteins in entrées, appetizers and breakfast items, as well as on pizzas, puts tomato sauce at the top with 373 mentions, and then cream sauce with 181 mentions. All-American barbecue follows with 160 mentions. Salsa clocks in at 84. Other sauces mentioned include honey mustard, cheese, wine, hollandaise, lemon butter, pomodoro, mushroom and Bolognese. Even rémoulade, beurre blanc and béarnaise get nods.

Equally interesting is the ingenuity of today’s product developers when it comes to pairing classic center-of-the-plate items with novel sauces. 

Consider crab cakes. Bennigan’s Grill & Tavern accents its crab cakes with tropical and pineapple sauces, while Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar serves its crab cakes with a roasted red pepper and lime butter sauce.

Sauces are a natural accent to steak, and Fleming’s serves a mushroom duxelle and Madeira sauce with its prime filet. At Saltgrass Steak House, diners are offered a cognac pepper sauce with the chopped sirloin steak, and at The Capitol Grill, the steak au poivre is served with a Courvoisier cream and peppercorn sauce.

California Pizza Kitchen menus a number of sauces, including Marsala wine, creamy lemon-caper, tequilalime and jalapeño cream, and cilantro and lime cream, in addition to traditional marinara and Bolognese. Not to be outdone, Legal Sea Foods menus an astonishing array of sauces, including roasted red pepper and cold cucumber, lemon chive, mustard, tomato vodka, lemon caper butter, and Thai red curry coconut.

Barbecue sauce, too, appears in dozens of delicious variations. At Bahama Breeze, for example, the West Indies Ribs are glazed with a sweet and smoky guava barbecue sauce.

MOTHERLY LOVE 

The five classic French mother sauces wouldn’t recognize their progeny as seen on today’s menus. Such classics as rémoulade, béchamel and hollandaise now appear in dozens of inventive guises. Radcliff taps putting ethnic twists on traditional sauces as one of the most-interesting trends in sauces today.

Hops Grillhouse, for example, serves a Jamaican Walker’s Wood sauce with grilled shrimp as one of the chain’s signature items. Radcliff describes it as a beurre blanc—but this is definitely not your mother’s beurre blanc. “It’s a slightly lemony beurre blanc into which we fold a bit of jerk paste,” he explains. “It is savory with a little bit of spice, but it’s kind of an earthy herbal flavor...” He describes the sauce as containing “a little rosemary, but that’s not the predominant flavor,” with some allspice, cinnamon, clove, Scotch bonnet peppers and a touch of raisins and rum. In short: a jerk beurre blanc.

Perhaps consider a jalapeño hollandaise. Or maybe a béarnaise with a hint of the American Southwest.

“I think the American palate is getting more experimental and more adventurous,” says Lowell Petrie, vice president of marketing, Mimi’s Café. “You can argue about whether it’s going to be Italian or whatever ethnicity, but, regardless of the flavor profile, I believe what people are looking for is full-bodied, full-flavored combinations or layered flavors.” For its sauces, the chain goes international a bit and borrows delectable flavor combinations born in Italy, Asia and Mexico, as well as the American Southeast. “There are a lot of different influences on our menu,” he says. In a bit of a nod to perhaps a regionally inspired mother sauce, the chain serves its crab cakes with a citrus rémoulade.

Even as diners search for bolder flavor profiles, they continue to seek a little bit of the traditional, the familiar, the comforting. The challenge for development chefs is to provide that old-time comfort without boring diners. Petrie says Mimi’s fills that order by taking time-honored favorites and giving them a taste of the unexpected. “We’ve taken what is basically a comfort food—mashed potatoes and grilled chicken—and infused it with a lot of flavor,” he says. The chain’s Grilled Chicken Tuscan Style, one of the chain’s best-selling items, is served with a sauce of sautéed garlic mushrooms, artichoke hearts, squash and sun-dried tomatoes.

For Radcliff, the term “comfort” applies not only to traditional comfort foods, but also to dishes and sauces with which people are comfortable. Such items put diners at ease when ordering. “Our guests tend to react toward a broad comfort bull’s-eye,” Radcliff says. “I’ve heard things like ‘I’ve heard of that—I’m comfortable with that.’”

As a dip for fried shrimp, Hops serves a sweet hot sauce. “It’s really just a Scotch bonnet version of Thai sweet chili sauce,” Radcliff says. “It’s the kind of sauce that’s been around for 100 years, and you put a spin on it. People are scared, but when we present it in a way that feels approachable, the next thing you hear is, ‘Wow this is great! What is it?’”

SELLING WITH SAUCES 

Given the increasingly educated palate of the American dining public, interesting sauces will continue to help sell many menu items. “The consumer is more educated than ever,” says Radcliff. “They’re more aware, and think of themselves as being more aware, due to things like the Food Network. Food is a lot cooler than it was 10 or 15 years ago, and to know about food is cooler.”

A more knowledgeable dining public may add excitement to the lives of development chefs, but diners with a better culinary education also present a challenge. Those diners want to taste things they’ve seen on television, or read about in a magazine, or perhaps sampled while traveling. Better-educated palates are often accustomed to bolder and more-varied flavor profiles. Today’s diners want challenges, and seem to have an unquenchable appetite for variety.

Enter sauces. Diners have become more knowledgeable about sauces, and are growing more willing to try unfamiliar types.

A certain level of approachability or familiarity is still important, but Radcliff says developers today can introduce sauces with bolder flavor profiles than they were able to in the past. “I think people are going more and more out there with flavors,” he says. And, he adds, sauces with those bolder flavor profiles are appearing in all types of venues.

“Now it’s common. It’s worked its way through mainstream and all the way down to where it’s a buzzword in QSR menuing,” Radcliff continues. “If it’s worked its way into QSR, you know there’s a strong comfort level there—it’s hit the big bandwidth of the American consumer.”

Radcliff predicts another trend: “One thing that goes over well, that people enjoy when it comes to sauces and condiments,” he says, “is choice.” Some entrées are basted with one sauce and served with a pool of another. Or, there may be a variety of dipping sauces. There’s a lot happening on the plate.

“If you were to do, say, a boneless chicken wing with two or three different sauces vs. a boneless chicken wing tossed in Buffalo or ranch, I bet you money the one with the three condiments would outsell the other,” Radcliff says. “I think, more and more, that comes into play today.”

Radcliff, however, cautions against variety simply for the sake of variety. “The guest must perceive that all the sauces are appropriate additions to the dish,” he says. People are better at recognizing when, perhaps, he notes, someone is pulling the wool pulled over their eyes, so to speak. “It’s something that we have to be conscious of today. Variety is good, but variety for the sake of variety—maybe not so much.”

Sauces have a bright future as they continue to add variety and excitement to proteins across the menu. In today’s competitive restaurant industry, product developers constantly seek ways to make their menus stand out, and sauces with bold and imaginative flavor profiles are a great way to accomplish that differentiation.

Kate Harrigan is a freelance writer and editor specializing in food and travel. She lives in Massachusetts. Food Beat, Inc., based in Wheaton, IL, tracks menu activity at the top-200 U.S. restaurant chains. It provides the industry with in-depth menu analyses and related trend information.