At lunch hour today, a co-worker and I went for cheap Chinese buffet at a restaurant located about 10 minutes away from us. It’s not a place we normally frequent, but it works well when the preferred Chinese restaurant up the road is closed – as it is every Wednesday it turns out.

Next to the Chinese buffet is a small Indian grocery/video store. Ever since I first spotted the place, I’ve wanted to venture in and have a look around, and I’m reminded of this every time I end up at this Chinese restaurant. It inevitably turns out however that I’m either with people who don’t necessarily want to go in, or I’ve have simply forgot about the place until I’m well on my way back to work. Today I wanted to change that, and managed to convince my (somewhat reluctant) co-worker to come with me. I won’t mention his name here – protect the innocent and all that.

We ventured in, and the place is packed to the rafters. One side of the room is shelved with various food items, the other with thousands of video titles. Browsing through the first food isle, we both ask the question “I wonder if they have any HP Sauce in here? And if they do, perhaps they stock the curry variety??”. This particular variety has so far not been spotted “in the wild” on local grocery store shelves. It turns out at the end of the isle, there were 4 bottles which caught my eye.

The bottle looks like a traditional glass HP Sauce bottle and on it is the familiar British House of Parliament. It wasn’t labelled “HP Sauce” rather it read “#1 UK Steak Sauce”. Around the neck of the bottle was a Union Jack and it had a white plastic twist off cap. On the side of the label it was marked being imported into Canada and the french on the bottom of the label also helps to confirm that it was in fact made for the Canadian market. The bottle itself was covered in a layer of dust, and on closer inspection, the contents inside had separated! How long do you think it takes for HP Sauce to separate like this? 30 years? That’s how old I’m guessing this stuff is… The fact it’s on the shelf of a Indian food/video store is also intriguing. Oh yes, the price was marked at $1.99.

Could these bottles represent the first introduction of HP Sauce to Canada? Could that be why it’s labelled as the “#1 UK Steak Sauce” as an introduction to a then “new market”? Unfortunately I didn’t bring one back with me and I’m now kicking myself for it! It’d be easy to look on the side of the bottle to determine if in fact this product came from HP Foods. *sigh*

Tomorrow I’ll go back and I’ll pick up at least one bottle. In the mean time, it’s googling time…

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