There’s LA chef Tony Nguyen’s Drip sauce, which merges Southeast Asian and Calabrian chiles with California heirloom garlic and some organic honey for a concoction that’s delicious over eggs, rice or spaghetti with meatballs. Zhao, who launched 50Hertz in 2020 and says he sold 20,000 bottles of Sichuan pepper oil overnight after The New York Times praised his products, is part of a movement that has seen amped-up Asian flavors go mainstream in America. The red is nice atop pizza, noodles and other carb-heavy foods. The green goes well with seafood and salads. Zhao recommends using his Sichuan pepper oils, which are made with rapeseed oil instead of highly processed canola oil, as a condiment. It dawned on me that this could go into international cuisine. They said this thing could really go beyond Sichuan food. My friends had never tasted anything like it before and they loved it. I just drizzled a little bit of the green Sichuan pepper oil, and it worked so well. “I think it had mushrooms and shallots and a lot of cream and a lot of Parmesan cheese. “I added the oil to a Thomas Keller pasta recipe,” he says. Zhao returned to the United States with some “run-of–the-mill Sichuan pepper oil.” One night, he was making dinner for some American friends. When I had that cucumber salad, it was so aromatic and also had the tingling numbing sensation.”

“I’m very familiar with the spice, but I think even to me the green Sichuan pepper was novel. “My mom was making the cucumber salad, and she finished it with green Sichuan pepper oil,” says Zhao, who is based in Washington, DC, but called Robb Report from China. Yao Zhao is bringing the heat to Sichuan food and beyond.

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