Tabasco Tale......
I am a great fan of the author W.E. B. Griffin. He included General McInerney who was commandant of the Marine Corps as a character in some of his books. The General who is a real person is from Avery Island and his family makes Tabasco
Knowing this, while in the area, we visited the island. It is separated from the mainland by a very short and narrow bridge. There is a toll to cross.
The McInerny family has the Tabasco cooking facility on the island. During the tour you learn of all the various types of Tabasco including some very small bottles included in military rations.
At the end of the tour, you end up in a big store that sells all the various tabasco and every kind of tabasco product you can imagine. T shirts, aprons, coffee mugs, clocks and on and on.
Outside they have a food truck where you can buy jambalaya and file gumbo that is to die for.
At some point, while working on the village that houses Tabasco employees and pepper farm hands, salt was discovered. That is the whole place sits on a humongous salt deposit. They began to mine and sell the salt.
At some point in the salt mining operation, they discovered that under the salt, there was an ocean of crude oil. They drilled for and then extracted oil.
The island is a place of true natural beauty with live oaks and spanish moss. Tourists came. They established a kind of theme park for which admittance is charged.
It is all owned and operated by the family. It is just an island to look at it but in reality it is a gold mine
McInerney Tabasco, the authentic original thing, is a great sauce for cooking. It makes great jambalaya and gumbo as you note. It too has it’s place. Just not on the table as a condiment, in my opinion.