A great lover of the hot and spicy food, I love them hot! It used to be that chilli is added to cover up the taste, bland or otherwise. But now, it is a challenge to find the hottest challenge I can savour.

So the weekend past, I found myself heading towards Jindivick for the Hot Sauce and Fiery Food Festival. Know where Jindivick is?

Jindivick is around an hour and a half out of Melbourne, towards the East. We took the M1 towards Dandenong, past it, headed out towards Warragul. I thought I will have to turn off looking for a place called Robin Hood but fortunately, there were signs directing traffic towards the festival. It was a good start. The winding road took us past the little village of Jindivick, past farms with murders of cows grazing in the distant pasture. It was actually very peaceful and pretty, despite a train of cars heading for the Redback Farm where the festival was being held.

Was it worth the trip? Yes and No. It was a long drive, so I guess our expectations were a little high. First, upon reaching the farm, we were asked for donations for the Tsunami appeal to enter the parking. That was okay. What we did not expect was the $12 entrance fee, which was not stated in the newspaper nor on their website. Given the distance we had travelled, we were unwilling to turn back and paid up.

The festival consisted mainly of stalls selling food with different forms of condiments with different degree of spice and chilli. While we were there, there was a competition of some form where contestants were competing in a chilli eating competition.

We did sample some of the hot sauce. One brand in particular, Death Sauce, was deadly. The hottest was the Mega version, and that, had to be sampled with care! All in all, there was only about 20 stalls, 1 of which was a first aid stall (required, in case the sauces were too much to handle!), several wine stalls, and less with samples of hot sauces and spices.

I guess I expected a little more, like spicy pop corn, chilli hot dogs, chilli candy, spicy drink, hot sauce with bbq deer (since it was a deer farm as well). And with a $12 entrance fee, I guess I wanted to have something in return.

But on the bright side, I know where to order my Death sauce!

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