When Melisse Fernando migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka, she couldn’t have known that her secret recipe for hot sauce would win her family ‘Australian Sauce of The Year’ for 2024 at the Australian Barbeque Awards. However, her daughter Bernie and son-in-law Anthony Brookes, with their keen entrepreneurial spirit, recognised the potential of Mama Melisse’s hot sauce, made in Frankston.
Anthony Brookes says, ‘The Sri Lankans have been playing with spice for hundreds of years, but we are very much babies here in Australia with spice.’ He’s happy to disclose what’s in the secret sauce: ‘Lots of love, rainbows and unicorns tears,’ he says, laughing. ‘No, I’m just kidding. The basis of our sauce is fresh Australian bird’s eye chillies, ginger, garlic, sugar and a little bit of salt with vinegar. We haven’t recreated the wheel; this recipe is a family recipe we can trace going back over a hundred years. The secret part is how you make the sauce, and it’s the balance of those ingredients as well.’
The secret part is how you make the sauce, and it’s the balance of those ingredients as well.
“I remember when I first tasted Melisse’s hot sauce; I was blown away. I thought, “What the hell is this!” Then we started sharing it with our friends, and they all loved it and wanted jars. Tradies would come over, and we’d give them a taste, and they’d come back saying, “I need to get some more of that hot sauce. We love it ourselves, and we are massive foodies.”
Chilli is a welcome import after the bland English meat and three-veg diet, and barbeques now favour the juicy and succulent rather than the over-cooked steak that Anthony says his parents tested by ‘Tapping it on the table and if it didn’t make a noise it wasn’t cooked enough.’
Hot sauce is massive in the US and is becoming just as big in Australia. We’re getting into chilli in a huge way, and Anthony says it’s not just because of the taste.
‘There’s a lot of health benefits associated with chilli,’ he says (chilli can be analgesic when applied topically and releases beta-endorphins in the brain) ‘but it’s the taste.
There are a lot of chilli sauces out there that are just about heat but the tricky thing is to make a flavoursome hot sauce – lots of taste – and then have the heat that goes with it. There is so much sauce out there that is just ridiculously hot that we just do not enjoy ourselves. ‘The boys get it out and see how brave each other is to eat it. To me, that’s not something I’d like to put on my food. Food is all about enjoyment, and sauce should enhance the flavour of what you’re eating and give you a nice heat.’
The pandemic gave the Brookes family the opportunity to commercialise Melisse’s sauce when their hospitality firm shut down, as so many others did during Covid. Hospitality was the last industry to re-open in Victoria. The sauce has been so successful they’re now moving to a bigger kitchen and premises in Frankston. Melissa is now retired and enjoys spending time with her grandchildren, including her grandson, Reece, who is a brand ambassador for her sauce.
The Australian Barbecue Awards are part of ‘Meatstock’ (a play on Woodstock), where barbeque aficionados get together for a massive festival of all things barbeque, including the ‘Australian Sauce of The Year’. Anthony says, ‘We don’t make our sauce for awards or trophies; when people enjoy our sauce, that’s our trophy. We submitted our product for judging for the first time this year and scored Sauce of The Year. It’s a nice industry recognition, and we were very humbled to get it.’
Because it’s made with all fresh ingredients, Melisse’s sauce can be used for many things, including as a marinade and in mayonnaise. Recipes and a list of stockists can be found on their website mamamelisse.com.au