The kitchen sits in Rawlins Village, on the windward side of Nevis, where the land levels out between the foothills of Mount Nevis and the sea. Locals call this the breadbasket. The soil is volcanic and the growing season is the whole calendar.
Llewellyn Clarke runs it. He was born in Manchester, learned to cook making coconut tart beside his mother, and trained in London at Le Caprice and The Ivy before a spell at Auberge du Pommier in Toronto. He moved to Nevis in 1999 to be near his father. The first pepper sauce came four years on. There are three now.
The Hot Pepper and Thyme is the original and still the signature. Red scotch bonnet from St. Kitts farms, fresh Caribbean thyme, vinegar, salt. Thyme opens it, bonnet carries the middle, and the finish runs long without scorching the palate. It is the bottle on every table at Sunshine's and on the chef's pass at the Four Seasons.
In 2014 FedEx sent a film crew to Rawlins Village. The advert followed a single bottle of the Hot Pepper and Thyme to a remote mountain village in China, and took nearly three hundred thousand views in three weeks. The recipe in the advert was the recipe on the shelf.
The Guava came next. Red bonnet again, but the heat is folded into ripe guava from the same village. Fruit-forward and jammy where most pepper sauces lead with vinegar. It belongs on a cheese board, beside roast pork, or on cream cheese and crackers, after which the room tends to go quiet.
The Mango uses yellow bonnet, milder and more aromatic, with mango from the plantation up the road. Sweeter at the front, longer on the finish, the colour of a wedding cake. It pours over grilled fish and holds beside curry or jerk.
Three sauces, one kitchen, one address. The recipe does not change.
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