Pogo’s Peppers: Hot sauce shop bringing heat and take-home meals to North Hampton

NORTH HAMPTON — While the temperatures may be dropping outside, things are about to heat up in North Hampton.

Pogo’s Peppers is opening its own retail spot at 122 Lafayette Road after three-plus years of treating the Seacoast to their sumptuous — and smoldering — flavors through its website and at a handful of restaurants and markets.

“This has been a long time coming for us, and we are really excited about the opportunity,” Pogo’s owner Matt Pongrace said while surveying the space that includes a kitchen, retail area, and a welcoming wrap-around porch.

“It’s a little dry right now, but we’re going to make it ours.”

Pongrace and his wife and business partner, Alli, have big plans for the space, formally the home of Mad Pork. Along with offering all of their sauces headlined by The OG at the store starting next week, the plan is to have “take and bakes” after the New Year. This will include pre-made taco kits, carnitas, mac and cheese, and other entrees to take home.

“Seems like these days, people just love the ease of something like that,” Matt said. “Anything that makes making dinner easier. People are busy so we would like to offer something like that.”

Come spring, Matt and Alli hope to have the shop open for breakfast and lunch for takeout. While local licensing does not allow for dining within the store, the couple plans to have several tables and chairs outside on the porch for people to eat during the warmer months.

Pongrace has spent the last year and a half simmering and steeping his tasty concoctions in the early morning hours in the kitchen of one of his favorite local restaurants, Logan’s Run, just down the road in Hampton. Now, with his own kitchen at his disposal 24/7, the culinary options are endless for the North Hampton native and former Winnacunnet High School lacrosse and hockey standout.

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Making sauces has always been a passion

Pongrace said his culinary drive was fueled by a 10-plus-year stint in the Air Force after high school.

“It took me all over the world, and I got to experience a lot of great cuisine,” Pongrace enthused, recalling his time serving as a boom operator and an in-flight refueler. “I was always trying to find the good street eats and the good local type places and not the touristy type places. It has always been a passion of mine, and I have been cooking forever and making sauces and salsas forever.”

Fresh off his service in February 2020 and now grounded with everyone else during the beginning of the pandemic, Pongrace tapped into that passion and soon was utilizing all four burners on the couple’s stove in Rye as he experimented with a wide array of ingredients.

“I just rinsed out a bunch of old hot sauce bottles and started bottling some up,” said Pongrace, who is now a lacrosse coach at Winnacunnet. “Just for something to do, I started dropping it off on friends’ and family’s doorsteps.”

One of those doorsteps belonged to his high school friend Russ Hilliard at Swell Oyster Co. in Hampton. After tasting The OG, Hilliard was quick to ask if Pongrace could come up with something that would complement the flavor profile of his oysters, and soon Pogo’s Peppers second staple sauce, Jalapeno Lime, was born.

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Sizzling social media presence

Along with the peppers, a key ingredient in Pogo’s online success has been its active social media presence, which Alli juggles seamlessly along with a full-time job as a special education teacher in Stratham, coaching in the Exeter High School girls soccer program and bartending at Tj’s of Portsmouth. The couple figures they are close to racking up sales from all 50 states from customers drawn in by the myriad of social media clips and pictures that illustrate the array of recipes and uses for their tasty product.

“Getting that following has been huge,” said Alli, who was an all-state soccer star at Exeter and played for UNH in college. “Whether it’s Instagram or TikTok, we’re reaching people across the country that we normally wouldn’t.”

With Matt in the kitchen in North Hampton, Alli will run the front of the house at the store, while looking to expand the retail opportunities of the brand.

“It’s the move we needed to expand,” Alli said of the brand, which can be found at Tj’s, Stoneface Brewing, Victoria’s Kitchen, Caffe Kilim and Swell Oyster Co. “Right now, for our vision, this is what we needed and I'm so excited.”

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How did Pogo's Peppers get its name?

Pongrace is a third-generation Air Force member, and his entire family tree is well-represented in each 4-ounce bottle he turns out. His father, Joe, flew F16s for 23 years, and it was his call sign “Pogo” that inspired the name of this spicy undertaking. And his popular Colonel’s Mustard was not named for the “Clue” character as you might expect, but rather for his grandfather Don, who had a distinguished career as a colonel in the Air Force and who also happened to be quite the hot dog aficionado.

“He loved his hot dogs on Sundays after church, and he always had a little mustard stain on the lapel of his jacket,” Pongrace reminisced with a smile.

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Flavor forward, with plenty of heat on the back side

The pride that Pongrace has in his three signature sauces is unmistakable, none more so than with The OG.

“It’s the old guard, the original,” said Pongrace of the versatile hot sauce that can spice anything up from eggs and sandwiches to Bloody Marys. “It has kind of a Caribbean profile with orange, lime, pineapple up front, and habanero creeps in with a little carrot, onion, and garlic on the back side that rounds it out.”

While the Jalapeno Lime sauce was crafted for Hilliard and his burgeoning oyster farm, Pongrace notes that it has a broad seafood profile for everything from shrimp to fish tacos. It's also a good complement, he said, to breakfast sandwiches and homemade salad dressings. All the ingredients for the sauces are natural, and no artificial preservatives are used. In fact, the only preservative found in Pogo’s products is apple cider vinegar.

While The OG packs a fair amount of heat, Pongrace knew that he would have to up the ante if he wanted to work the chili-fest and brew-fest circuit. He said there are always a handful of daredevils at those events looking for next-level heat, taste buds be damned. Enter Jake’s Sauce, a seasonal fall offering made with the combustible Carolina Reaper pepper and dedicated to his late brother, Jake.

“My brother was someone who was insane about his heat,” Pongrace recalled with a smile. “All of our sauces are very flavorful, and the heat is kind of a byproduct. We like to get the flavor right, and then the heat just comes with the territory.”

Matt and Alli hope to have the new shop in North Hampton open Wednesdays through Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m., through the holidays.

Information: pogospeppers.com

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Pogo’s Peppers opens shop with take-home meals in North Hampton NH