Mikey, is he cute? Is he brown? Would he like to join us for a cocktail?

I'm referring to the sauce, of course.

If you had to pick the top two American condiments, would it be ketchup and mustard? I think it would be. There might be the occasionally mayo or Tabasco tossed into the voting results, but I think the classic red and yellow would win out pretty readily.

But here, there is another sauce in the mix, known simply as 'brown sauce'. At the Grafton the other night, I ordered the 'mixed grill' -- a festival of meat that include lamb chops, lamb kidney, sausage, a chunk of rib eye, some gammon,
a grilled mushroom, and a grilled tomato. And a giant vat of chips (fries!) Not for the faint hearted.

The wench asked what sauces we wanted. Feeling brave and curious, I asked for HP (I had seen it in the store) and she quickly responded, "Oh, you mean brown sauce?" Yes I do!

Take Worcestershire Sauce (woo-stah!), dilute it, add a fruity tang, and cut it with some ketchup and you have a rough idea what it tastes like. With my mixed grill, it was an excellent dipping sauce and was used readily to choke down the lamb kidney (nasty). Apparently, in parts of Scotland, this is the preferred condiment on fish and chips (instead of malt vinegar).

They take their brown sauce and their patriotism seriously here. HP, the #1 brown saucer, moved their production facility out of Birmingham to the Netherlands in 2006. The backlash of the move was that loyal Brits switched from HP to brands made in the UK, including Branston -- a newcomer on the brown sauce market. There was even political moves to pull HP from the Palace.

Fast-forward about 2 weeks: I now have my own bottle of HP. I put it all over a nice BBQ chicken the other night. I felt right at home. They might be on to something. A word of warning: if you try to find brown sauce in the USA, you might find HP sauce but its a different mix than what we get here. Thanks to one of the most dedicated blogs I've run into for the brown sauce information.

More YouTube: Don't click play if your boss is looking over your shoulder... this might be hard to watch for the squeamish but it does a great job of expressing one man's love for his brown sauce. Ew.