The Year of the Sauce: Building Something New with Stitch Cafe

As a fan of both coffee and food (I know, how unique!), it's natural for that fandom to extend to Stitch Cafe in Oklahoma City. They have great coffee and the best pour-over selection in the city, as well as some killer breakfast tacos. In fact, on my birthday when I get to choose the brunch spot, Stitch has been my go-to for years.

So, you can imagine my excitement when they contacted me with an idea for a hot sauce created just for them.

I met up with the owner, Chad, as well as another one of the masterminds behind the food and coffee at Stitch, Jonah. The brief was simple enough—they were revamping their southwest-inspired menu and wanted to bring a next-level taco sauce to the table (literally).

The execution was not quite as simple. Above all, the sauce had to stay out of the way and enhance the dishes they worked so hard to craft. But I still wanted to bring something a little unexpected that could feel like part of Stitch's identity.

What better way than to use their own coffee in a hot sauce? I'd played with coffee in past batches and knew it could work (throwback Dressed to Impresso), but it needed a real reason to be there. This wasn't just any coffee, either. Stitch roasts their own through Clark's, so this meant using coffee they grow their identity around, in food that's also theirs.

Their menu has a good selection of savory, southwest-inspired dishes, and I wanted the sauce to match that world instead of sitting next to it. Stitch's kitchen does a lot of rich breakfast plates (the Quick Draw, with espresso-glazed bacon, and egg all stacked into a taco, and their savory pop tarts stuffed with ham and cheese, to name a couple), and that kind of food needs lift, not more richness.

So Mexican Peppers and Coffee leans into vinegar and citrus (from oranges and limes) to bring that necessary brightness and Mexican peppers (red jalapeños, chile de arbol, and guajillo) for that complex, fruity, earthy, chili flavor and heat. The coffee sits underneath and reads as savory depth, and the southwest spices tie it back into everything else on their menu.

It took a few tries to get there. The first version was too sweet from too much tomato, which fought the table sauce vibes we were going for. The sweetness also compounded with dishes like the Quick Draw, which had a touch of sweetness on its own. We corrected that. There was also some fine-tuning around making sure the arbol and guajillo showed up well in the flavor spectrum without adding too much heat. Arbol chilis pack a punch, so keeping the flavor forward without tipping the heat over was a fun balancing act. (We even had habanero powder in the first batch, which we later pulled.) After that it was mostly about pushing the brightness further and tightening the texture, so it felt like it belonged on their tacos.

Batch. Taste. Collaborate. Repeat. After a handful of iterations, we found ourselves at a table inside Stitch once again. But this time it landed a bit differently.

Back when we first talked, Jonah told me what he loved in a sauce, what he pictured for the new menu, the flavors he kept coming back to. Once again, I handed him a spoon. I watched his face the second he tasted it, and it was like I had relayed back to him what he initially told me, but in sauce instead of words. He knew it too. It's hard to explain exactly, but there's something about feeling understood. Hearing acknowledgment in a way you hadn't experienced before. I realize this is sounding a bit cryptic and probably strange. That was the moment, though. That click. That quiet connection of just being on the same page with someone. I really do think food is a universal language. And I had a blast speaking it with Jonah.

I appreciate Chad and Jonah's collaboration and partnership, their discerning palates, and their vision for their menu and this sauce through the whole process. But there's something else I keep coming back to: those are the same tables I've celebrated birthdays at, the same tables I've sat at year after year. Getting to put something on them that we built together, knowing it's now part of someone else's birthday, someone else's regular order, someone else's version of "my spot," is a strange and genuinely special thing to get to be a small part of. And I'm honored.