Cuban Flame is a Barbaro Mojo site about Cuban grilling. Barbaro Mojo is the Cuban hot sauce company in Miami, and the grilling part is not a marketing angle: the company exists because of a pig roast.
It began at a Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) roast in 2015. Mario Cruz’s son Kevin wanted more heat on the lechón, so they built a hot sauce on the family mojo criollo. It was gone before the meal ended, and it vanished the same way every Christmas after that. During the 2020 lockdown Mario planted a pepper garden and, with his wife Ali, turned the Christmas sauce into a company. Barbaro Mojo LLC was founded in Miami in November 2020.
The name comes from the Cuban exclamation ¡Qué bárbaro! (amazing, tremendous) and from Mario’s December 4 birthday, the feast of Santa Bárbara. The sauces are hand-bottled in small batches in Miami, built on mojo criollo with real peppers and no extracts, gluten-free and vegan, no high-fructose corn syrup, no MSG. Read the full story on barbaromojo.com.
Seventeen honors across seven competitions, all judged blind. El Havanero™ took 1st Place Best Latin Hot Sauce at the International Flavor Awards and 1st Place Best Cuban Hot Sauce at Old Boney Mountain; Piñazo™ won the Grand Prize for Product Packaging at the 2025 Scovie Awards and People’s Choice at Jungle Jim’s Weekend of Fire 2026; Matanza™ placed 2nd at the 2025 Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival. The full award record.