Crafted on Lopez Island since 2007

A hot sauce that makes good food taste better.

Medium heat. Deep flavor. Built from three superfoods — smoky chipotle, raw cacao, and ruby goji berries — into a sauce that weaves sweet, sour, salt, bitter, savory and spicy into a single drop.

Discover the Sauce → See Recipes

Organic Vegan Gluten-Free GMO-Free Paleo & Low-FODMAP

Food is Medicine Sweet · Sour · Salt · Bitter · Savory · Spicy Three Superfoods, One Bottle No Preservatives. Ever. Made on Lopez Island, WA Food is Medicine Sweet · Sour · Salt · Bitter · Savory · Spicy Three Superfoods, One Bottle No Preservatives. Ever. Made on Lopez Island, WA

The Ingredients

Three superfoods, woven into one sauce.

Every bottle starts with three short, deliberate ingredients. The rest of the list is just the things that hold them together.

CHI · The Smoke

Chipotle

Slow-smoked jalapeño chilies bring the warm, woody heat that anchors the sauce — present, never punishing.

CAO · The Depth

Cacao

Raw cacao nibs add roasted bitterness and a quiet, complex finish — the reason Chicaoji belongs on dessert as much as dinner.

JI · The Sweet

Goji

Ruby-red goji berries lend a natural sweetness and the antioxidant-rich body of one of the world's oldest tonic foods.

The Flavor Profile

Every taste your tongue knows, in one bottle.

Most hot sauces pick a lane — vinegary, fiery, or sweet. Chicaoji refuses. It draws on every taste your palate recognizes and braids them together so no single note overwhelms the others.

The result is a condiment that pairs with breakfast eggs and chocolate brownies, with hummus and grilled salmon, with the inside of a sandwich and the top of a salad.

"Chicaoji deliciously weaves together sweet, sour, salt, bitter, savory and spicy."

Pronounced

Chick · OW · gee

The name is a portrait of the bottle.

CHIpotle + caCAO + goJI = Chicaoji

Chicaoji 5 oz and 12 oz bottles on a table

Since 2007

Lopez Island, WA

Our Story

Born in a juice bar, guided by an idea.

"Food is medicine." Chicaoji was built on that single principle — that what you eat is supposed to nourish you, not just fill you.

Created in the summer of 2007 by Randall Waugh with the community at the Vortex Juice Bar & Cafe on Lopez Island, Washington, Chicaoji began as a question: could a hot sauce do more than just heat?

The answer is in every drop. Three superfoods. No preservatives, no flavorings, no colorings, no additives of any kind.

Read the full story →

Org.

Organic

Vgn.

Vegan

Gluten Free

non

GMO Free

Pal.

Paleo

Low

FODMAP

How to Use It

Good on everything. Surprising on a few.

Chicaoji works as a condiment and as an ingredient — equally at home glazing salmon and folding into brownies.

Breakfast

A drop on the morning plate

Fresh

Over a garden salad

Gatherings

Passed around the table

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"It tastes like something a grandmother in three different countries invented together. We put it on eggs, in stew, on chocolate. There is no wrong place for this sauce."

— A devoted Chicaoji household

The Lineup