- The Salt Lake Bees fry sauce won over crowds during the team's first "Fry Sauce Night."
- Fans voted via cellphone, sampling sauces from four places.
- The quirky night celebrated Utah's fry sauce legacy, with one of its founding fathers throwing out the first pitch.
SOUTH JORDAN — Utah's top fry sauce might be hidden at the home of the Salt Lake Bees.
That's what the fans decided during the team's first-ever "Fry Sauce Night" at The Ballpark at America First Square. Yes, the team's in-house sauce, a mix of mayonnaise and ketchup, along with ranch, barbecue and sour cream, per the team's chef, Leonard Love, took the crown in a much-anticipated battle of Utah's favorite condiment.
"I'm honored. I'm just a Florida guy who is learning the Utah lifestyle," Love said, holding a golden condiment bottle he was awarded.
The award does come with a few caveats. Fans were given a sauce sampler with fries and then asked to vote with their cellphones after the fact. The Bees' in-house team only competed with some of the juggernauts — and recent entrants — in the fry sauce game: Arctic Circle, Hires Big H and J-Dawgs.
Other fan favorite sauces, like Crown Burgers, Tonyburgers or Apollo Burger, weren't in the mix. Those who came to the table in the right field patio also seemed content with a free sampling without formally voting.
One fan called fry sauce "the best thing ever," telling KSL she has an Olympic pin celebrating fry sauce from the 2002 Games. Another said she was from Arizona but had adopted the sauce in Utah, saying she was a fan of the Bees sauce from the four in front of her.
Thursday's festivities celebrated all things fry sauce, regardless of the recipe. It was a quirky minor league baseball night that started with the players — many for the first time — dunking fries in the sauce after batting practice. A youth team recognized before the game fittingly wore fry sauce-colored orange uniforms, which was a coincidence, a Bees spokesperson said.
One of fry sauce's founding fathers also started the night off.
Fry sauce's origin is not as straightforward as its primary mayonnaise and ketchup combination, as Deseret News noted after trying to sort it all out in 2022. One story pins it to Ron Taylor and Max Peay, who came up with it while working at an Arctic Circle franchise in Provo in 1955.
The two got tired of ketchup and liked mixing around sauces, and decided to mix it with mayonnaise. They started sharing it with friends and the word got out, with people asking about "that fry sauce stuff."
"Some people said we had a recipe. We didn't have a recipe. We just looked at the consistency and the color, and we liked it," he told KSL, reflecting on the moment all these years later. "(The customers) named it. We didn't give it a name."
Fry sauce became a lore after that, being picked up at other Arctic Circle locations. It then became a staple at essentially every restaurant in the state after that.
"It just took off. It surprised me, but look what it's become now," said Taylor, who tossed out the first pitch Thursday night.
He was taken aback as he watched the night's celebration, too, watching people take delight in what he helped create.
It's unclear if the Bees will bring back the theme night next year or expand the competition. Love, who now owns the newest crown in the condiment's history, is ready to defend his new title either way.
"I guarantee a second win, and I absolutely didn't pay anyone off to vote for us," he added, with a grin.
Or perhaps the best fry sauce recipe is as mysterious as its origin.
