There’s one in every family – someone who always orders the hottest food in restaurants and loves a food challenge.
Whoever they are in your family, they’ve got competition. Meet Pete Duval, the 52-year-old dad behind Pete’s Hot Tips, an Instagram account all about trying the hottest hot sauces.
Every Tuesday Pete publishes a new video trying a brand new spicy sauce. Always with napkins at hand, his reactions are hugely entertaining.
Pete, a realtor from Concord in New Hampshire, has always loved spicy food, according to his daughter Heather.
“When I was a kid he would challenge restaurants to make the spiciest buffalo wings and it was never hot enough,” Heather told the Press Association.
“A few years ago I moved to New York City and bought him a bottle of Dos Toros habanero hot sauce. He fell in love with it! Since then he’s been exploring different sauces and telling me about them whenever I would come home.”
Pete’s penchant for the hot stuff also includes giving family members tips on how to eat the sauces he likes to try. This summer when Pete was waxing lyrical about sauce to Heather, she came up with an idea.
“We started calling [his ideas] Pete’s Hot Tips and I told him I’d start him an Instagram where he could share his tips with other people.
“I work in social media so he saw it as a fun way to understand and relate to what I do. Now he just loves the attention!”
Obviously Pete is the star of the show, but the rest of the family put in their share of hard graft. Heather’s boyfriend Chase designed Pete’s logo and graphic design, Pete’s wife Sandi films the videos and Heather edits the videos and runs his social media feeds.
Other friends and family members send sauces to Pete and act as a live audience for the videos from time to time. “We keep supplies from smaller, local companies and occasionally jump on a trend like the hot chip challenge he did for his Christmas special,” says Heather.
Pete’s follower count is currently below 200, but after going well and truly viral (over 72,000 views) on image sharing site Imgur this week, it is rising.
Next year Pete is set to achieve new heights as he takes part in the spicy ramen challenge. Heather reckons this one will be a particular challenge as it’s “more of a marathon than a sprint”.
Here’s to 2018!
