McDonald’s just debuted a new “Mambo” sauce, bringing a version of the popular D.C.- and Chicago-area sweet-and-spicy condiment to a national audience. Photo for The Washington Post by Jennifer Beeson Gregory
Mumbo sauce – or “mambo sauce,” depending on your trademark preference – has a complicated history that countless publications have painstakingly tried to trace. Some claim the condiment was born at a rib joint on the South Side of Chicago. Others say carryouts in Washington, D.C., created it, a sort of spicy riff on sweet-and-sour sauce. One historian even suggested that “mild sauce,” a Chicago variant of mumbo, may have its roots in Southern barbecue before the Great Migration.
Whatever story you subscribe to, you couldn’t help but feel the weight of the moment when McDonald’s announced it would roll out its own mambo sauce nationwide, far beyond the two historically Black communities that fiercely stake their claim to the delectable stuff. The official debut of the sauce was Oct. 9, but some McDonald’s locations jumped the gun and were serving it the weekend before. I should point out that, technically, the chain introduced two new sauces for a limited time – the other being a sweet-and-spicy jam designed mostly for breakfast items – but the only one folks in D.C. and Chicago care about is the mambo sauce.
Our collective fascination with Mickey D’s mambo sauce, I suspect, falls into a number of categories: Curiosity about where on the mumbo-sauce sweet-spicy spectrum (sorry, I just can’t do “mambo sauce” with a generic reference; it sounds too much like a condiment in Tito Puente’s cupboard) this corporate version would land. Pride about how a regional sauce will, if only briefly, have a national audience (and require numerous explainers on what mumbo sauce is). Cynicism over McDonald’s latest attempt to cater to Black communities, from which the behemoth burger chain has benefited greatly.
Jerome Grant, the former chef at Sweet Home Café inside the National Museum of African American History and Culture, falls more into the pride category, which makes sense on at least a couple of levels. Born in the Philippines, Grant moved around a lot as a child, but he spent some formative years in the D.C. area, where he would frequent carryouts that prepared their own mumbo sauces. Grant remembers getting his hair cut as a teenager at a shop in Northeast Washington, then crossing the street for chicken and mumbo sauce at Wings & More Wings, which would become his afternoon hangout.
“Having McDonald’s highlight a piece of D.C. culture across the country is amazing!” texted Grant, who’s shopping for a permanent home for Mahal, his Afro-Philippine barbecue concept. “When people think about the District, they immediately think about politics but there is such a rich cultural and culinary footprint beyond that.”
But Grant has another reason to feel proud about the McDonald’s mambo sauce: He had a hand in creating it. More than three years ago, Grant was invited to join the McDonald’s Culinary Council, a group of chefs from different regions, cultures and styles of service. The council, Grant said, helps develop ideas for McDonald’s that spotlight regional cultures or lean into new technologies and trends. The mambo sauce was one such initiative, and Grant played a part in “the process of bringing this rich sauce tradition to diners in the U.S.,” he told me.
The sauce, he added, is “restaurant quality, if I may say.”
With that term, I think Grant is implying the sauce is a chef-grade stuff – because, on a basic level, McDonald’s is a restaurant, even if some consider the chain more like a cankerous sore on society. I’ve tasted Mickey D’s mambo sauce three times now, from three locations, and I must confess: I’m pretty impressed with the condiment, too.
It’s been a minute since I ordered McNuggets, and once I opened the container, I was, perhaps unreasonably, turned off by the aromas. It was like some cross of pea flour, partially rancid oil and fried chicken. The smell didn’t stop me from eating the nugs, I should point out.
Mickey D’s mambo sauce clings nicely to the chicken, coating every bite in a thick layer of the condiment. On first bite, you’ll encounter a wave of sweetness, no doubt due to the liberal amount of sugar in the dipping sauce. But wait a beat. The condiment’s saccharine qualities will be soon be consumed by fire. This corporate mambo sauce has a serious cayenne pepper kick. In fact, it packs more chile pepper punch than most mumbo sauces at D.C. carryouts, at least the ones I have frequented.
That heat indicates a certain fearlessness from McDonald’s as it went about creating its version, and for that I have to salute the chain. I detect a real effort to pay homage to mumbo sauce, even if McDonald’s had to call its version “mambo sauce.” The reason for the name variation, I suspect, is because Chicago-based Select Brands owns the trademark to “mumbo” and has been historically protective of the term. (Incidentally, Derrick Price, a native Washingtonian, owns the trademark for “mumbo sauce,” though at present he sells only a mumbo sauce seasoning.)
Still, I have to admit, the McDonald’s mambo sauce leaves a strange taste in my mouth. It has little to do with the sauce itself and everything to do with the company’s relationship with Black communities across the country. In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” historian and professor Marcia Chatelain lays out the political, social and entrepreneurial forces that first led McDonald’s into Black communities, a relationship that has been as much predatory as promissory, contributing to what one study called “oppression through poor nutrition.”
“Mumbo sauce, to me, evokes Black D.C., and McDonald’s has teamed up with a number of Black foodie influencers to launch it, so it’s clear who they think will be drawn to it,” Chatelain emailed me when I asked for her thoughts.
“McDonald’s has a long history of trying to figure out how to market products to Black consumers specifically,” she added, “and the release of mumbo sauce calls to mind these attempts from the past, which gestures toward their success in marketing to Black diners, as well as trying to use Black culture, popular figures and foods throughout the company.”
Then I asked Chatelain whether she had opinions about the new product. She responded seemingly seconds after I hit send on the email.
“As a person who has spent a lot of time researching the fast food industry, especially, McDonald’s,” she wrote, “I always look at these campaigns with some cynicism because my first question is: Who is making the sauce? Meaning, does this type of expansion provide support to the locals who innovate and produce it?”
(For the record, Grant told me that New York-based Baldwin Richardson Foods, known as one of the largest Black-owned-and-operated food businesses in the United States, is manufacturing the sauce for McDonald’s.)
“I know that McDonald’s is also supporting a documentary about Mumbo sauce as part of the campaign, which helps raise awareness about the sauce and its importance to D.C.,” Chatelain added. “But I don’t think there is a better tribute to Black consumers and communities than a living wage.”
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