The Celebrity Chef Steak Sauce That Just Didn't Meet Our Expectations

Both steak sauce and celebrity chef foodstuffs are both liable to make sparks fly. Many beef devotees will insist that all a beautiful cut of cattle needs is salt, pepper, and fire to really sing. And, you know what, in the case of super-spendy selections like filet mignon and chateaubriand, they're absolutely right. Product lines by culinary stars can be a little more subjective. Some folks just aren't going to like such-and-such personality's this-or-that, simply because they aren't too keen about the boldface name to begin with. Which is also fair. But then you've got some items that are just objectively disappointing, like Guy Fieri's Flavortown Top Secret sauce.

As denizens of Flavortown, which Fieri has ruled fairly and justly for time immemorial, we are disheartened to have to rank his secret sauce so poorly: at number nine on our list of 10 store-bought steak sauces. It's hubris that might have felled this particular contribution to Flavortown, as it's listed among "sauces for everything" on the municipality/retail shop's site. It is so little more than a bland aioli that it isn't too removed from a squeezable mayo. It certainly isn't for everything, and it definitely isn't for us.

Ironic, isn't it? That one of our nations literally and figuratively loudest celebrity chefs would produce a sauce that can barely muster a whisper? Top Secret's formal product description on the Flavortown Sauces website promises an aioli base that's amplified with the "dynamite sparks" of chili powder, admittedly "subtle" mustard, and garlic of indeterminate intensity. But, when dipped with steak, all of these supposed seasonings are actually indeterminate, to the point of barely registering. Try to pile on more, and you just get more of less.

To be fair, Top Secret sauce does not resemble the rich rouge hue that many associate with a standard steak sauce. But remember that steak's better bedfellows, like béarnaise or a rich blue cheese sauce, also diverge from that shade. The winning steak sauce on our list, however, did actually meet that aesthetic expectation. None other than A1, icon of the form, that titan of steakhouses, backyard grills, and smoke-filled home kitchens near and far, took the top spot.