TEMPLE, Texas — Located at 1217 South 1st street in Temple, lies Chef Flaco’s Gourmet Foods; a small storefront that specializes in fresh salsa, queso and hot sauce packed with flavor. Their mission is to provide the finest products with the freshest ingredients.
Adam Yauk is the man behind ‘Chef Flaco’s’ and has garnered over 30 years of culinary experience having his start in Austin at the former Le Chef College of Hospitality Careers - now called the Texas Culinary Academy.
“I have been a chef my whole life,” Yauk said. “It’s my passion, it’s my dream to share my creations with the rest of the world.”
As you enter the store you are greeted with several trophies and plaques from various industry competitions statewide and winning over 17 of them like first place at the 2022 Austin Chronicle hot sauce festival and first place at the 2023 Artisan Flave and Spicy Flave awards – giving you the sense that you’re about to make the right decision with your purchase.
“Everybody that has any kind of trade wants people to enjoy or respect their art,” Yauk said. “We want people to appreciate our products.”
The ‘Chef Flaco’s’ brand was created about 10 years ago. It all began with a fresh salsa recipe that Yauk made at a four-star hotel on the San Antonio Riverwalk. The reception to the recipe was positive – people wanted more. So naturally, Yauk wanted to give more people the opportunity to try it.
“I wanted to bring this experience to the general public,” Yauk said. “That way people could enjoy having nice fresh foods, fresh condiments without all the preservatives I was seeing.”
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Chef Flaco’s makes 8 different hot sauces, 8 different salsas and 3 different kinds of tortilla chips all in-house. Additionally, some seasonal products are created like the cranberry-orange salsa that is made from fresh cranberries, fresh orange zest, orange juice, brown sugar, glazed walnuts, fire-roasted peppers and cilantro.
“This is a nice replacement for that canned cranberry sauce that your grandma may have served you years ago,” Yauk said.
Chef Flaco not only specializes in salsa, but hot sauce as well. Wicked Provisions is the sister company featuring intricate ingredients and complex flavors. Through Wicked Provisions, Chef Flaco wants people to change the way they think about hot sauce; using it as more of an ingredient rather than a topping.
“We’ve been using hot sauce in food for years, it just never really expanded into other types of cuisine,” Yauk said. “I have a recipe right here – this chuck wagon chili recipe. It's using our coffee infused hot sauce.”
Yauk says the 'Chuck Wagon Chili’ recipe pays homage to the cooking methods of pioneer cooks that had limited supplies. They opted to utilize coffee grounds in their chili to give it more of a rich umami flavor.
Other recipes featured at the store include the ‘Atomic Chicken Bacon Mushroom Pasta’ featuring Wicked Provisions’ Bacon Garlic Reaper, and the ‘Spicy Pineapple Chicken’ featuring Yellow Jacket hot sauce.
See those recipes below:
Chef Flaco's Gourmet Foods original recipes
With the holidays approaching, there are many gifting opportunities. Online you can purchase some hot sauce gift sets and in-store you can build your own gift package.
Yauk previously suffered from alcoholism and substance abuse. His fast-paced, high-demand career only made the disease worse. After finding and completing a 12-step program, Yauk was able to recover. With Wicked Provisions, Yauk is giving back to the recovery community by donating to Shatter Proof, a non-profit charity dedicated to the prevention and treatment of substance abuse. A portion of the profits from every purchase of a Wicked Provisions product will go to the charity.
Chef Flaco’s is not only home to original products and Wicked Provisions; Yauk has partnered with smaller businesses that do not have a brick-and-mortar location yet to feature their on-brand products like hot sauces, pickles, spices and jerky. Yauk says this has been a good way to build and strengthen community relationships. Moreover, you can still find Chef Flaco’s Gourmet Foods at local farmers markets.
Chef Flaco’s Gourmet Foods is open Tuesday through Saturday 11a-6p.
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