Arkansas and Vermont are the only states left without pins on the map of the United States hanging in Smith House Manufacturing on Thompson Avenue in Nipomo.
The Smiths had shipped Monkey Spit Hot Sauce products to every other state in the union as of May 22 and are eager to claim the remaining two for Monkey Spit, which has been doling out sauce that burns for 13 years. Paul Smith, who accidentally created his hot sauce about 16 years ago in Tepusquet, said that although he sells hot sauce, he’s more interested in putting out a product that tastes good than one that takes out your taste buds.
“We’re more into flavor versus burning your palate,” he said. “I’d rather give you something with a really good flavor and that you like with a nice burn, rather than something that sits on your shelf … because it’s too hot.”
And Smith knows all about too hot. Too hot is Monkey Spit Hot Sauce’s origin story, which started in a pot of serrano pepper soup all of those years ago. Smith had recently returned from living in Orange County, where he’d been working on an ambulance and attempting to become “music’s next Tom Waits,” as he put it. Things didn’t quite work out as he planned, so he moved back to Tepusquet, continuing with his job on an ambulance and playing music gigs.
His parents called him one day, asking him if he wanted a bunch of serrano peppers that they couldn’t use and were planning to throw out. Smith said he took them home and put them in some soup, which he was only able to eat a few tablespoons of.
“It was way too hot,” he said.
He had some tortilla chips and cheese, so he made nachos and ladled the soup over the top of them, realizing that he’d made a pretty good hot sauce on accident.
Smith’s friends would come over to his place to play music and leave with jars of hot sauce, and he’d get requests whenever he’d play shows. He remembers getting ready to head out to Yosemite for a gig and filling up Mason jars with hot sauce before he left.
“Now wouldn’t this be funny if this was what I was supposed to be doing in life,” he said he told himself. “And it just kind of happened.”
After being out for too long with a work-related injury, Smith lost his job on the ambulance. So he cashed out his retirement and started Monkey Spit Hot Sauce.
“I basically took my 401K money I had saved up and put everything into it and sold all of my instruments and everything just to keep the company going,” he said.
Monkey Spit offers four hot sauces. The original contains serrano peppers, and Smith said the recipe hasn’t really changed since the soup incident, except for the addition of vinegar to make it more shelf stable. Red Jal contains red jalepeños, Gorilla is a spicier serrano blend, and Atomic Monk is a serrano-habanero mix. The hot sauce company also has barbecue sauce, pepper jelly, and a seasoning line. Whimpy Chimp is their take on Santa Maria-style seasoning, Monkey Dust is a jalepeño seasoning, and Nipomo-Style is the Whimpy Chimp with habanero added.
Whimpy Chimp has a long history in Smith’s family. Well, at least the seasonings involved do. He said his family owned one of the original general stores in Central City—Santa Maria before it became Santa Maria in 1885—before moving out to Tepusquet. The seasoning that became Whimpy Chimp has been part of his family since before the city was renamed from Central City to Santa Maria, according to family legend.
After Smith launched the hot sauce company, a co-packer out of Nevada was making and bottling the hot sauce. However, that packer also made changes to the recipe, which Smith wasn’t too happy about. About three years ago, he and his wife launched Smith House Manufacturing to bottle their own product as well as help out other local sauce, spice, and jam makers get their creations in the right packaging using the right recipes.
One of the first products Smith House packaged outside of Monkey Spit was Splash Cafe’s hot sauce, Raucous Daucus!, a carrot pepper blend. Splash Cafe co-owner Joanne Currie reached out and asked Smith if the cafe could use their bottling system. Smith showed her a pitcher, he said with a laugh, because that’s what they were using at the time to fill the bottles.
Although the product manufacturing has become a little less manual than it was at the beginning, Smith said they don’t have a bottling line yet and are hoping to get one in the next six months.
“We’re actually the only—I think I’m correct—I think we’re the only state-certified cannery between Gilroy and Santa Paula,” he said.
Currently, he said, Smith House is packing items for 12 customers right now, including A Cruising Gourmet Specialty Sauces, which is also local to Nipomo. The products are available at Smith House Manufacturing’s storefront in Nipomo, as are Monkey Spit products.
Looking back on the decision he made so many years ago to put everything into starting a hot sauce company, Smith said he’s never regretted it.
“You didn’t know it then, but now—if you don’t take any risks you have no gains,” Smith said.
Editor Camillia Lanham is ready for some Monkey Spit hot wings. Send food and drink news to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 3, 2021.