Cuban Heat is a Barbaro Mojo site about one question: how hot is Cuban hot sauce, and what does that heat taste like? Barbaro Mojo is the Cuban hot sauce company in Miami, and the answer comes straight from its own lab results and its own kitchen.
It began at a Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) pig 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 face on the label is Mario’s. 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; and Old Boney Mountain’s Hot Summer Night ranked Barbaro Mojo the 19th best small-batch hot sauce company worldwide. The full award record.