Hasta La Ideas

Powerful raw recipes with health benefits and impressive heat

After continuously selling out of the hot sauces they were procuring from a friend, POST owner Bobby Stackleather decided he needed to make his own. The restaurant’s new line of house-made hot sauces—called Bon Merde, French for “good shit”—reflect the creativity and attention you’ll find elsewhere on the Alphabet City restaurant’s menu. Stackleather explains, “Our recipe is totally different and raw. This was something I had experimented with in the past, and decided to pick it up again. With months of testing different ingredients, trials and errors, we ended up with the product we sell at the restaurant now.”

POST’s hot sauces always stood out when paired with any number of their delectable brunch and dinner dishes: a separate menu page dedicated exclusively to biscuits offers plenty of ground for experimentation; roasted goat cheese with baby heirloom tomatoes and honey atop a baguette also works with each iteration’s heat. Available in mild or hot and habanero, the Bon Merde concoctions offer plenty more than tantalizing heat and added flavor.

“Because it’s a raw food and produces its own acids while fermenting, it keeps its probiotic properties,” Stackleather explains. “Most hot sauces are cooked and or fortified with some sort of acid (like vinegar) which kills the beneficial probiotics. Lacto-fermented foods boost heart and brain health and offer anti-inflammatory, cancer-fighting, and boosting-your-immune-system benefits.”

The powerful, probiotic sauces are available now, alongside a select shortlist of POST’s larger menu, on food delivery services for NYC residents. Eventually, Stackleather’s newly trademarked Bon Merde line will be more broadly distributed, beyond the bounds of the restaurant.

Images courtesy of Bobby Stackleather