Owen's Fish Camp Bottles Its Own Hot Sauce. None of It Goes Past a 6.

Most hot sauce brands want you to sign a waiver. There's a skull on the label, the word "reaper" somewhere in the name, a guy in a YouTube video crying into a gallon of milk.

Owen's Fish Camp in downtown Sarasota bottles five of its own, and the hottest one rates itself a 6 out of 10. Out loud. On purpose. That's the most honest thing I've read on a website all week!

The lineup, mildest first

They're sold at Burns Mercantile, the restaurant's little shop around the corner on Burns Lane, $8 for a 5-ounce bottle. The heat ratings come straight from the product pages:

• Everyday Red Cayenne, 4 out of 10. Aged red peppers, vinegar, salt. The sauce that goes on eggs without anyone making a speech about it.
• Everyday Red Cayenne with Garlic, also a 4, plus minced garlic and a little cumin.
• The Green Flash Serrano, 5 out of 10. Serrano, garlic, a touch of sugar. The middle child of the family, and it knows it.
• Plantain Pain, 5 out of 10, made with bananas and rum. A hot sauce that's half dessert and half a boat drink. Very Sarasota.
• Tate's Tropical Tantrum, 6 out of 10, the top of the scale. Habanero mash with pineapple juice, mango, oranges and raisins. Raisins! It's having a tantrum, but it's a tantrum at brunch.

I love this. A 6 out of 10 is a hot sauce that says sorry when it bumps into you. It's the heat level of a Florida "cold front," where everyone puts on a fleece at 68 degrees and talks about it for a week.

Where it goes on Saturday night

On the fried stuff, obviously. The menu posted on the restaurant's site (it's labeled March 2026, so prices may have moved) is Southern seafood with a sense of humor:

• Camp Basket, $23.99: fried oysters, shrimp and cod with fries and slaw. This is where the Tropical Tantrum earns its keep.
• A Plate of Deviled Eggs w/Redneck 'Caviar', $10.99. Somebody had fun writing that one.
• Boiled Hot Roadside Peanuts, $4.99, which is gas-station-on-the-way-to-Arcadia food served on a real plate.
• Low Country Boil for 2, $67.99: snow crab legs, shrimp, mussels, clams, andouille, potatoes and corn. This is the job the Everyday Red was born to do.
• Chicken Fried Lobster Tail, $24.99, with mustard mayo, a dish that sounds like a dare and is right there in the starters.

And then my favorite line on the whole menu: "Beers for the kitchen $6. Nothing says 'thank you' like a cold beer in a hot kitchen." You can buy the cooks a beer. Right there on the menu, next to the pie. If that's not the nicest thing printed in Sarasota County this year, I don't know what is.

The banyan, the swing and a famous name

The restaurant's own homepage says the giant banyan out front was given to Sarasota developer Owen Burns by Thomas Edison, and there's a tire swing out back. So you can eat hush puppies under a tree with a better résumé than most of us, and then go sit on a swing like a 9-year-old. Nobody will stop you. The swing is a 2 out of 10 on the heat scale, but a 10 on the "should a grown adult be doing this" scale.

Go

• Where: Owen's Fish Camp, 516 Burns Court, downtown Sarasota (plus a Lakewood Ranch location, which adds Sunday brunch 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.)
• When: open every night at 4 p.m.; downtown runs until 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday
• Hot sauce: Burns Mercantile, 530 Burns Lane, open for in-store shopping daily at 3 p.m., or order online. Fun bonus: Burns Mercantile is also one of the shops carrying those Bradenton jams that read like a bar menu.
• Order this: the Camp Basket, a bottle of Tate's Tropical Tantrum to take home, and one $6 beer for the kitchen. Be the reason somebody's shift got better.

Planning Sunday? Brooke has this week outdoors, Sandy has the week ahead and the meetups, and every costume party is in the Halloween Finder.

— Marina