How We Started

El Diamante Negro, a Spanish-Creole restaurant, was started by the Bocas family over 70 years ago in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Although the restaurant is no longer in operation, its fame—and its infamous hot sauce—live on, brought to life under a new name by a granddaughter, Sandra, who continued the family’s fine food tradition in the US quite by accident.

“It was 2012 and I was looking for a career change. The taste of my grandmother’s hot sauce recipe had always stayed with me, and I’d been using it in my own cooking for years. Friends just went crazy for it and would ask if they could get a jar when I next made some. Then one evening my now business partner, Fiona Douglas-Hamilton said, ‘Why don’t you bottle and sell it?’”

Self-admitted ‘roll up their sleeves, get it done’ kind of people, they found a commercial kitchen, got a food processor’s license and went to work. The unique flavors of their hot sauces have ensured a growing demand at Puget Sound Farmers’ Markets and local food co-ops and grocery stores in Washington State.

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