Brussels has its food identity built around frites au lard, stoemp under sausage, waterzooi at the table and gueuze pulled from the Senne valley. HotZeg, a small-batch family kitchen growing its own chilies in Uccle and run by Vlad Rojnik and his family, has taken Best in Category in Asian Style Chili Sauce with CHEE-LY at the European Hot Sauce Awards 2026 (heatawards.eu), Europe's flagship hot sauce competition, with ADIXION also taking Gold in Sweet and ranking #6 in Europe's Top 10 overall.
HotZeg is built around three sauces, all developed by Vlad and his family in Uccle, with chilies grown in-house and the remainder of the produce sourced from Belgian organic farms including La Ferme des Hêtres in Berloz and Belgo Bio in the same region. The three medal-winning sauces sit on different reference points: Asian fruit and floral umami in CHEE-LY, Belgian North cherries with local apples in KIKEBICHE, and Caribbean Madame Jeanette chilies with fresh mango in ADIXION. Two Golds and a Bronze across three categories from one kitchen, all built without leaving the city.
Nathan Austin on KIKEBICHE:
"KIKEBICHE sits at the mild end of the range and the chili work stays genuinely low, so what carries the bottle is Belgian North cherry against fresh local apple. Sauces this gentle usually drift toward jammy. This one stays bright, structured around the cherries rather than the sugar." – Nathan Austin, Tasting Editor, Republic of Heat
CHEE-LY (Gold, Best in Category, Asian Style Chili Sauce): lychee combined with chili and a build of Asian aromatics, with umami carrying through floral notes. The name folds lychee into chili and is designed to cross multiple Asian cuisines rather than sitting in one.
ADIXION (Gold, Sweet, #6 in Europe's Top 10 overall): the kitchen's first sauce, built on Madame Jeanette chilies, fresh mangoes, Belgian apples, fresh ginger, local onions and garlic plus a hint of spices. Vlad describes it as a yellow premium spicy ketchup without the tomato, designed as the entry point into the HotZeg range.
KIKEBICHE (Bronze, Mild Chili Sauce): Belgian North cherries against fresh local apples, with onion, garlic and a touch of spice. The name means "goosebumps" in Brusselian dialect, and the sauce is HotZeg's household reference, reached for on homemade meatballs and Sunday roast chicken.
"We started HotZeg with one goal, prove to ourselves that we could make tasty hot sauces with natural ingredients only and keep the pleasure hand in hand with spiciness. Now with 3 different awards for our KIKEBICHE, ADIXION and our CHEE-LY, which is way more that we expected, we are fully spiced-up to push our project a little bit further. We would like to thank every judge, participants to the EHSA 2026 and every single person, friend, family member that helped HotZeg. Now it is time to celebrate and prepare all of our HotZeg sauces to be delivered to your tables." – Vlad and his family, HotZeg
The European Hot Sauce Awards 2026 ran over 200 sauces from across the continent through blind tasting this year, scored on five criteria by a deliberately mixed panel of chefs, sommeliers, critics and chilli specialists. Asian Style and Sweet sit at the experimental end of the EHSA card, where producers riff on cuisines outside the European tradition or push fruit-forward flavour work that has to land without tipping into novelty. Taking Gold in both with two different sauces from the same kitchen is unusual.
"Two Golds across Asian Style and Sweet, plus a Mild Bronze, is the full range from a single kitchen. Belgium doesn't show up on every European hot sauce result, and HotZeg has just put Uccle there with three medals. EHSA exists to surface exactly that kind of result." – Neil Numb, Founder, European Hot Sauce Awards
CHEE-LY, ADIXION and KIKEBICHE are available direct from HotZeg via Instagram @hotzeg.bxl and at hotzeg@outlook.be. Full EHSA 2026 results across all 16 categories: heatawards.eu/results/2026?utm_source=press_release&utm_medium=press&utm_campaign=ehsa2026&utm_content=hotzeg.
The European Hot Sauce Awards 2026 are announced ahead of the Berlin Chili Fest, 29–31 May 2026. Republic of Heat's EHSA 2026 Top 3 winner box is live at republicofheat.com/de-en/discovery-set/euhsa_top3, with further EHSA selection boxes at republicofheat.com/de-en/hot-sauce-sets.
PRESS RESOURCES Reveal videos on YouTube, embeddable: - Mild Chili Sauce: https://youtu.be/nQsGH0tPhZ8 Press kit (photos, logos, AI lifestyle composites credited Republic of Heat / European Hot Sauce Awards 2026): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14204lbDIYM9WPvbUf9bXf_YP72GRSi6H?usp=drive_link
ABOUT HOTZEG HotZeg is a small-batch hot sauce kitchen in Uccle, Brussels, run by Vlad Rojnik and his family. The kitchen produces three sauces by hand, with chilies grown in-house and the remaining produce sourced from Belgian organic farms including La Ferme des Hêtres in Berloz and Belgo Bio. CHEE-LY, ADIXION and KIKEBICHE all medalled at EHSA 2026. Contact at hotzeg@outlook.be and via Instagram @hotzeg.bxl.
ABOUT THE EUROPEAN HOT SAUCE AWARDS The European Hot Sauce Awards (EHSA) is the professional competition for commercially produced hot sauces in Europe, run annually since 2024 from heatawards.eu. EHSA was born out of the Berlin Chili Festival, which has run since 2019 and returns 29–31 May 2026, and became an independent competition in 2024. Over 200 sauces from producers across the continent were entered in 2026. Entries are judged blind across five criteria: aroma, heat profile, flavour, creativity and finish. The 2026 edition covers 16 categories, with Gold, Silver and Bronze medals awarded across multiple positions in each. Each category also names a Best in Category, the top Gold. EHSA is run independently of any single producer or retailer.
ABOUT REPUBLIC OF HEAT Republic of Heat is a European hot sauce subscription designed to show off the flavours coming out of Europe and help solve the distribution problem independent makers face. Founded June 2025 in Berlin by Nathan "Naga" Austin and Simon "Scoville" Gardner. The Discovery subscription delivers three handpicked craft sauces plus a spicy extra to subscribers across the EU each month. Press partner of the European Hot Sauce Awards 2026. republicofheat.com.
PRESS CONTACT Press: Republic of Heat, on behalf of European Hot Sauce Awards contact@republicofheat.com +49 176 41601284
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