According to sauces: Augusta restaurant that helped popularize spicy peri-peri is closing

Heather Harlow last week broke the news over social media to their customers with her husband, Scott: The restaurant she and her family started 17 years ago to share their love of one of the world's most popular peppers will be closing.

DiChickO's Peri-Peri Cafe's last day open at 2825 Washington Rd. is Sunday, Harlow said.

"Thank you for helping a long-shot experiment become the success that it has been for so long," she wrote. "We are sincerely grateful to have had the opportunity to serve you and get to know so many of you as family."

Traveling the world after graduating from the University of Georgia brought her to South Africa, Harlow wrote on the restaurant's now-offline website.

"While there, I fell in love with peri peri chicken," she said. "I was in awe of the popularity it had. There seemed to be a peri peri chicken restaurant on every corner. The flavor was addictive and delicious and I absolutely fell in love."

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The peri peri is a cultivar of a wild pepper brought to southern Africa by Portuguese explorers. Over the centuries, the versatile pepper has become a staple in South African cuisine, particularly with peri peri sauce. It's not your standard vinegar-plus-peppers hot sauce recipe.

"Peri peri sauce is made differently – beginning with sauteing the onions and garlic, and then developing flavor over a long period of time," Harlow wrote. "The result is the layered depth of flavor unmatched by any sauce anywhere in the world."

DiChickO's offers an entire product line of peri peri sauces and marinades. As former Augusta Chronicle food columnist Karin Calloway explained in a 2011 column, Harlow's then-mother-in-law, Doreen DiCicco, added peri peri, spices and an African influence to a sauce originated by DiCicco's father, who emigrated to South Africa from Italy. The recipe has been tweaked ever since to offer different levels of flavor and heat.

The menu includes sandwiches, paninis, salads, burgers and "flaps," which are grilled burritos. The Wild Salmon Flap joins Alaskan salmon with avocado, cranberries, walnuts, red onion and a spring greens mix. But if you want some of the legendary peri peri kick, order the Southwest Flap.

The DiChickO's restaurant name, by the way, is a phonetic spelling (dee-CHEEK-o) of the Italian surname.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: According to sauces: Augusta restaurant that helped popularize spicy peri-peri is closing