Dilita Afrikana Peri-Peri Hot Sauce

Visiting Tesco's recently, I came across a brand of peri-peri sauce that I hadn't spotted before, and immediately made a grab for it to see what it was like. I'm fond of african-style chilli sauces (thanks mainly to Nando's, a UK chain of afro-portuguese restaurants built around a their peri-peri sauces, but also the delicious Mama Africa's sauces and a few others), so this newcomer had a lot to live up to.



While not a brand name I've particularily heard of before, Birmingham-based Dilita have apparently been around for a while. Reading between the lines of their website, they appear to be an Indian food manufacturer who are diversifying their sauces.

Tasting Notes: So is it any good? Well, right off the bat this sauce hits you, not with the dark heat of chilli, but with a raw kick of citrus. Now this is no bad thing in itself - lemon is a key ingredient in peri peri sauces, and I wouldn't take it away for the world - but in this sauce it comes off as smelling slightly acrid and artificial. Tasting it reveals another disappointment; instead of the fruity bite of fresh lemon, we get a bitter taste, as if it used only the rind. While all the peri-peri flavours are there (although biased heavily towards lemon) it's unbalanced, slightly unappetising, and overall, bitter. The texture is mostly smooth, but very oily - it splits really easily, so give it a shake before using - but it has the odd bit of chilli mash and seed for texture. The skin is a little annoying - it doesn't seem to have much flesh attached to it and just sticks to your throat; it'd probably be slightly nicer if it was properly homogenised. For heat it's passable, although it's probably mid-range for this type of sauce - the hot end of both Mama Africa's and Zulu zulu - heck, even Nando's - would kick the crap out of this one, and taste a damn sight better to boot.

What it's Good For: Difficult to say. Usually peri-peri sauce is great on grilled cheese, or as a thick condiment, but the acrid flavour is a little offputting. I find myself adding it to sauces to try and hide the failings of it's flavour. It's passable as long as it's playing into the flavour of the dish, but really, if you can taste more than a hint of it, it's too much. And what's the point in that?

Final Thoughts: Really, what this reminds me of is lime pickle, with the citrus turned up to eleven, and the spices adjusted to make it a bit more african-y. Which is odd, because I like lime pickle - bitter and sharp and oily - but this sauce manages not to be nice like lime pickle or nice like peri-peri. And it is definitely possible to do indian fusion (I promise, I'll review some of the lovely sauces from Mr Vikki's at some point) - but this is not it.

The Verdict: Give it a miss, really. There are better sauces out there.

Still, worth dismissing Dilita altogether? Not so fast. I've found at least one positive mention of their sauces on the magical intarwebs - a Green Habanero Sauce - perhaps they'll fare better when they're not trying to ram as much lemon peel into their sauce in an attempt to make it "african"? Well, we'll see - while I don't think I'll be trying any of their range with "peri peri" in the title (of which there are four), if I spot the others I'll probably give them a try.