Finding a home for Sriracha: Imperial Valley can take one more spicy stink, pho sho

Cow poop. Steer manure. Estiércol. The bovine bowel-ful bounty. Dung de derriere. Moo doo (doo).

I got a million of ‘em.

It’s all good, if you consider it smells like money and is the sickeningly strong stink that drives our most rock-solid economic engine in the Imperial Valley — agriculture, and more specifically, the billion-dollar cattle industry.

We Valleyites have been coughing, choking and tearing up over the most powerful of pungent punches all around us all of our lives.

When it hasn’t been the animals, it’s been the onions, the chemical fertilizers or pesticides, the noxious odors of the New River to the south and the foul fish kills of the north at the Salton Sea.

In short, we’re not a bunch of babies like the folks in Irwindale, who have finally punked the geniuses at Sriracha and successfully shut down the origin of the fiery yet fruity food of gods.

Earlier this week a judge ordered Huy Fong Foods, makers of Sriracha, to cease any operations in its recently relocated factory that might be causing the odors and fumes offending the olfactory faculties of the residents of this San Gabriel Valley city.

As Sriracha has grown exponentially in popularity as the trendy condiment of the moment, Huy Fong Foods moved to Irwindale in an effort to expand and ramp up production. The move took the company from being able to produce 3,000 bottles per hour to 7,500 bottles every hour.

But it’s that stink that had that city and its residents fuming enough — from the chili fumes, no less — to file for an injunction to stop production.

I doubt there will be a run on Sriracha anytime soon, although I also wouldn’t bet against that. What each and every one of us in the Valley has seen on the tables of our local Chinese restaurants for as long as I can remember, has gone mainstream in the way that something hip and cool often can.

The four-star eateries have been creating edible foams and Jackson Pollack-like canvases with the red chili sauce for years, but that ubiquitous be-roostered bottle with its green cap has come perilously close to jumping the shark as a flavor for Lay’s potato chips and a mayo-based sauce and promo sandwich at Subway of all places.

But guess what? It can’t jump the shark because it doesn’t suck. In fact, it’s quite awesome. Sriracha rocks today, just like it did the first time any of us saw it on the table at Mah’s Kitchen or Yum Yum or China Palace.

So I say, bring Huy Fong Foods to the Far Flung Valley.

David Tran, it’s time to move your rocket sauce out of L.A. County, where it’s clearly not wanted and gets no love. Come to Imperial County, home to endless backroads and wide-open spaces, where the only complainers would be the cows with their own gastrointestinal issues, and that shouldn’t conflict at all with the production of your gastro-pub-popular product.

In a state where space for production facilities is probably a premium and where regulations are still a pain in the butt, maybe sending out some spicy feelers wouldn’t be such a bad idea. The Imperial Valley Economic Development Corp. could lead the charge. Sell it, guys.

You’ll get no Irwindale-size whiners in these parts. With more than 80 percent of the Valley of Latino descent, most of us are used to the tear-inducing, nasal-passage-searing effects of chiles toasting on the family comal.

People around here throw back churros locos like other people pop Snickers, so a little capsaicin in the environment is not going to cause a full-blown court battle.

So orale, Mr. Tran. Your Vietnamese self is already trafficking in a Thai chili sauce, so that cross-cultural connection isn’t foreign to you. Mexicans around here would instantly bond in the spicy knowledge that a Latino-Asian courtship would be a marriage consummated in heaven, or the fiery bowels of hell if that’s more appropriate.

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Nov. 29, 2013. Huy Fong Foods has since worked out its differences with the city of Irwindale.