Peach bourbon maple syrup. Habanero sauce sweetened with a touch of mango. Pickled asparagus spears, tangy soldiers standing at attention in jars. Applewood-infused salt to make the homeliest burger taste as if it just alighted from the grill.
John Voge and Brandon Adams have assembled flavors to elevate home cooking to cuisine in their new store, Pepper & Olive Oasis, at 5475 Shirley St., North Naples. The pepper is in their hot sauces, roughly 700 of them, ranging from gentle nips of heat in Fat Cat to a brand that announces its intensity: Hellfire. Sauces and spice blends from The General’s Hot Sauce Co. come in glassware fashioned as hand grenades. With dog tags offering the heat level, of course.
Adams has even created his own hot sauces for the store. His personal favorite is habanero-mango, although no one should leave without trying the sublime habanero-pineapple, as well.
It’s in the seasoning
The olive in their name could refer to the rows of stuffed olives, blue cheese and feta among them. But the oils star here. The pair have assembled varieties from a straight extra virgin olive oil to black truffle, clementine and the piece de resistance, a hickory-smoked garlic olive oil. It’s just waiting to supplant butter and sour cream as your baked potato’s best friend.
“We spent six months sourcing everything before we put it in here,” declared Voge. The olive oils were among the toughest, they agreed; the two chose Laconika, a Greek brand.
“It’s so ridiculously good,” Voge added. “They’ve won so many awards it gets boring going through page after page of awards.”
Laconika also distributes the balsamic vinegars Adams and Voge sell, but they’re a product of its birthplace: Modena, Italy. The two have collected a stableful of flavors there, too, in both white and dark vinegars. Among at least a half-dozen lights are basil, peach, bourbon and lemon-cucumber, perfect for salads and drinks. The dark flavors embrace varieties such as chocolate, coffee, fig and black walnut, ready for glazes on meats and roasted vegetables, or simply perched as an exclamation point on a sliver of Parmesan cheese.
Tasting cups are available for visitors to sample — and, they suspect, fall in love with at least one flavor.
The two have been keeping an ear to customer comments with their food truck, a familiar sight at farmers markets in Naples. It has been the best advertisement for their barbecue, which is what brought the two together in the first place, after they met as gift and soap store owners in the same mall.
“Me and Brandon both liked to barbecue,” said Voge, although he likes to entrust the ribs to Adams. And they are both philosophers of “low and slow” smoking — no parboiling of their ribs, thanks. “We’ve never had an argument.”
John Voge, left, and Brandon Adams offer breakfast and lunch sandwiches and tacos at Pepper & Olive Oasis, 5475 Shirley St., in North Naples, as well as condiments and charcuterie ingredients for almost any taste; the wall behind them contains their olive oil and balsamic vinegars section.
Photo by Olga Hayes
Advocates of sampling
Between the two of them, they’ve tasted 85% of the products they sell, dividing them up between spicy for Voge and sweet for Adams. There’s one product they agree on as fellow Hoosiers, however — the royalty of the pork tenderloin sandwich, which comes out of their food truck flat, crispy and as big as a tricycle wheel.
Pepper & Olive Oasis also serves pulled pork sandwiches and tacos, smashburgers and bacon-egg-cheese breakfast biscuits, all of which become territory for customer exploration with the flavors. There are coffee and drinks for the breakfast crowd, too.
Pork tenderloins could be the unofficial state sandwich of Indiana, and they get star treatment from Pepper & Olive Oasis owners Brandon Adams and John Voge, who are both Hoosiers.
Photo by Olga Hayes
“We have a hot sauce bar right here, and we allow people to use any sauces over here,” explained Adams. “Salads — everything comes with a salad, and they get to come in and choose which balsamic they’d like to pour on it.”
Every ’cue aficionado needs meat rubs, and Pepper & Olive Oasis has a wall full of them, with frisky brand names including Slap Ya Mama, Grill Your Ass Off and more. The locally produced Gator Hammock rubs are here, too. Smoked salts — mesquite, hickory, alderwood, apple and cherry — offer outdoor flavor for those nights when you have to cook indoors.
Voge and Adams couldn’t stop with toppings: There are pickled vegetables, German catsup, mustards as intriguing as wasabi-raspberry. They even offer Vermont-based Maple-Craft Farms and Cooper’s Mill syrups, including salted caramel, bourbon maple, peach and apple cinnamon flavors.
The hot sauce bar stands ready to add zing to your bacon-cheese-egg sandwich at Pepper & Olive Oasis in North Naples.
Photo by Olga Hayes
Healthful honeys
Those with allergies will be especially interested in the honey selection. Adams is a beekeeper and he and other area beekeepers offer local products such as palmetto, palm sable and Brazilian pepper honeys that help build up immunities. The lychee honey, however, is there for its exquisite taste.
Adams and Voge like jams, too, so they’re in the store and baked onto their 4-ounce blocks of smoked cream cheese, a perfect party appetizer. They even turn up in the pulled pork.
One front corner of Pepper & Olive Oasis holds pickled vegetables, from green beans to baby corn; relishes; salsas; drink mixes and syrups. Shelves of olive oils and balsamic vinegars stretch down the next part of the wall.
Photo by Olga Hayes
“A lot of people, they come in and they think, ‘Oh, bacon and jam — that doesn’t sound right’ until they try it,” Voge said. “That’s why we like to use the stuff on what we cook out there, so that people can actually experience it.”
Pepper & Olive Oasis is more than a store; it’s an adventure, the two declared.
It’s simple, said Adams: “We want people to have fun.”
Dining and Cooking