04:48 PM
More or less in 2010, a strange fever for Showy sauce began in Medellín. The yellow sauce, said the friends who sold dogs and hamburgers on the street. We ate with my cousins Mauricio and Lerma at the “perras de Nórber”, a business that was in front of the Gran Vía mall, in Belén. I remember well that one night we went from the common sauces—tomato, mayonnaise, pink, mustard and pineapple—to the sweet party of the Showy and the BBQ.
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It didn’t take long for Showy to become the queen of fast food sauces. So much so that restaurants of great significance like the one on the P, or the one on the Mc They decided to make their own versionsadding here and there a little more acidity, a little more sweetness.
Why does a mayonnaise-based sauce become queen? You have to do the experiment, go to a dog stand and ask which sauce they order the most: eight out of ten will say Showy. I asked a cook friend and he told me: “What I think is that some sweet flavors have imposed themselves like the pineapple sauce, the lecherita in the arepa and as you say, those that have the texture of mayonnaise. “These sauces are based on starch and look like a colada.”
One day a friend told me: Showy sauce is made in eastern Antioquia. He told me about Griffith Foods and its brand Zafrán, the North American company that is behind the product and that arrived in Colombia in 1976, the year in which they opened their plant. What does Griffith do? Liquid sauces, dressings and are behind the flavors that identify products such as Ranchera sausages, Frisby’s honey, KFC chicken breading; Its presence is countless, it is in brands such as Doria, Zenú, Noel, Dan, McDonald’s, Sarku Japan, Juan Valdez, Burger King and more. This is what we would call the chemistry of food: They are in charge of thinking about the flavors that people like the most. For example, said manager Zayda Martínez, the younger generations are looking for spicy flavors, which imposes on them the challenge of following trends and their customers know that they are the best in that business.
I went to the plant, I saw the ingredients of all the products organized so that there was no cross contamination, I saw the huge scales, the warehouses and the machines where the Showy sauce fell, the packaging process, the sealing. All employees were proud to have such a well-known product.
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I was surprised to realize that Salsa has actually been around for 30 years. and was created for use in kitchens of restaurants in Antioquia and Valle del Cauca. In 2010, and then my calculation did not fail, he took to the streets, to the dogs, to the hamburger sellers under the Zafrán brand. The official statement says: “It emerged as an innovative response to the trend of restaurants in Colombia, which used to develop their own ‘house sauce’, each with a characteristic flavor. For the most part, these sauces were mixtures of mustard and mayonnaise, adapted by each establishment to accompany hamburgers and sandwiches, two icons of fast food.”
Showy is today the best-selling brand in the category of mayonnaise base sauces in Antioquia, according to market research. I want to understand why, and I don’t know. The Showy is based on mayonnaise, has chopped cilantro—grown in eastern Antioquia—and little else. This company produces 280 tons of Showy per month. “These amounts represent 4.2 million doypacks of 200g that arrive every year at the homes of Colombians or 24 million units of sachets annuals that allow us to find a packet of Showy sauce in a restaurant in every corner of Colombia.”
It was invented 30 years ago by a Griffith employee, now retired. Nobody knows that story and women prefer anonymity, simplicity. I like to think about the people who change the lives of thousands with something small. I’m going to eat a hot dog, I ask the man what sauces he has and he tells me: “Showy, pink, tomato, BBQ.”
