Holy City cuisine heating up Food Network

CHARLESTON - They came for the spicy.

Food Network's Heat Seekers, a show devoted to scortching your palette, recently ate through several plates of Lowcountry cooking with a kick.

The show's hosts, Aaron Sanchez and Roger Mooking dined on spicy wasabi oyster shooters from Pearlz Oyster Bar, a spiced up version of the meatloaf sandwich from West Ashley's Hello My Name is BBQ food truck, Ronchos Nachos covered in Death Relish at Fiery Ron's Home Team BBQ and for dessert, a spicy Sriracha Donut from Downtown Charleston's Little Blue Brunch Truck.

"We had a great time," said Fiery Ron's Home Team BBQ owner, executive chef and pit master Aaron Seigel.

But landing a spot on the show was took a lot of work, he added.

"To get on these shows there's a lot of hoops to jump through."

Siegel has a good friend who also happens to be a publicist and has been putting the restaurant's name out a lot. Heat Seekers isn't the first TV show Seigel has applied for since opening his first restaurant in 2006. An earlier brush with small screen fame fizzled once he and the network involved determined Home Team wasn't the right fit for the theme of that show, but Heat Seekers was right up his alley.

Home Team will be featured in the final segment of the show, and in addition to featuring the restaurant's nachos with Death Relish will also include a signature drink, the frozen Painkiller Seigel developed for his Sulivan's Island location, where the show filmed.

Seigel said he can't take credit for the Death Relish, it was something concocted by his Sullivan's Island sous chef, William "Hollywood" Eason to satisfy a number of customers who kept asking for someting really spicy.

"It's got several different peppers some vinegar, onions and a little brown sugar," Seigel said. "it's very spicy, but not so spicy you can't taste it."

Though not on the menu, Death Relish is available at both Home Team locations, 1205 Ashley River Road and 2209 Middle St. on Sulivans Isalnd.

"It's one of those cult things that people have to know to ask for," he said.

It was a little easier for some of the other local eateries featured on the program.

"A location scout came down and ate with us and decided we'd be good for their show," Pearlz Director of Operations Mike Olsen said.

Despite a wide array of menu choices, the Heat Seeker team was only interested in something with a kick, so the chefs at Pearlz whipped up extra spicy versions of their oyster shooters and wasabi shooters.

"Regularly it's a little spicy, but it's not over the top," Olsen said. "But we'll do that for folks that want it."

The super spicy versions are another one of those special request items that remain off-menu.

"People know to ask for it," he added.

Pearlz has two locations in Charleston, 9 Magnolia Road and 153 East Bay St., where its portion of the episode was shot. There is also a Pearlz in Columbia that has been open about a year.

Cody and Ryner Burg aren't sure exactly how they wound up on the  show, though Cody thinks it had a lot to do with all the press their Hello My Name is BBQ food truck has received in the year they have been operating.

"We had a food blogger frequent the truck and write a few things about us and the network saw that and called us," he said.

Based in West Ashley's Avondale Point Business District at 844 Savannah Hwy., the Burg's serve up barbecue sandwiches and tacos from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

"We save Saturdays for events," Burg said.

They also feature different specialty sandwiches each week, and the Heat Seekers chose Ryner's spiced up meatloaf sandwich for the episode.

"It's one of our specialties, so we don't have it every day," Burg said.

To spice it for the show they added some spicy mayo and loads of jalapeno peppers.

"We had a great time," Burg said. "Aaron is really funny and afterwards we all went out for a few drinks."

The Charleston episode will air at 10 p.m. Friday on Food Network, which is channel 34 on Comcast (or 414 in HD), 49 on Knology (or 951 in HD) or channel 231 on DirecTV.