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Mumbo Sauce

We were out to dinner at St. Anselm’s this weekend with friends from out of town when Mumbo Sauce came up. It was served with their Bobo Chicken. For many DC natives, like us, the sauce that captures the flavor of home is Mumbo Sauce. There are many stories about where it originated, mostly people say it started in Chicago.

DC Mumbo Sauce is different from wherever you go ranging in color from orange to red, it is thinner than the typical red barbecue sauce, and it usually tastes closer to Chinese sweet and sour sauce. Some people think it is simply sweet and sour sauce with a little ketchup added. Both red barbecue sauce and sweet-sour sauce are typically made with the same base: Tomato concentrate, distilled white vinegar, and sugar.

In DC Mumbo Sauce the tomato base plays bass in the background with the vinegar and sugar playing the lead. DC Mumbo Sauce is most popular on chicken wings, French fries, fried jumbo shrimp, and fried rice, but it works on just about anything deep fried. Long-time residents argue about where DC Mumbo Sauce originated, making claims that it first appeared sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s at either Wings ‘N Things, U Street, or Johnny Boy’s among others.

The Chicago Connection

The original Mumbo Sauce was probably a ketchupy barbecue sauce created in Chicago in 1957 by Argia B. Collins, Sr. A Black man from Indianola, Mississippi, Collins was part of the great post-WWII migration to the industrial north from the agricultural south, especially from the Delta area of Northwest Mississippi.

Collins opened his first barbecue joint, Argia B’s Bar-B-Q, in the early 1950s in a storefront on the South Side, and in 1957 he created his signature Argia B.’s Mumbo Bar-B-Que Sauce. Locals called it “mild sauce” as opposed to hot sauce. His sauce’s popularity helped him and his brothers open about 10 other storefronts.

Mild sauce became popular at other BBQ and fried chicken joints in Chicago and can still be found at a dozen or so, mostly in the Black neighborhoods of the South Side. It has evolved to something akin to DC Mumbo sauce.

How Did Argia B’s Bar-B-Q Come to DC?

People still wonder about how Chicago Mumbo Sauce made its way into Chinese restaurants and fried chicken joints in DC and become something altogether different. The South Side of Chicago has vast concentrations of Black people, but it is also the home of Chinatown, which, in the 1950s, bumped right up against the area known as Bronzeville to the East. Just north of Chinatown was the Maxwell Street open air market, originally a Jewish enclave that after WWII morphed into a center of Black commerce.

It’s not hard to imagine a Black person bought a bottle of Argia B’s Mumbo Bar-B-Q Sauce and used it on carryout eggrolls from Chinatown. It is not much of a stretch to think that they moved to DC and brought the sauce along. Perhaps it got there in the suitcase of one of the great South Side Chicago bluesmen. Perhaps a cook from a Chinese restaurant brought it south. However it journeyed from Chicago to DC, within a decade after Argia B. introduced his condiment, something bearing the same name began appearing in DC.

Mumbo Sauce in DC

Many DC area restaurants, especially Chinese restaurants, Korean restaurants, and fried chicken carryouts serve DC Mumbo Sauce, which is sometimes also called Mambo Sauce, Mombo Sauce, Mumba Sauce, Mumble Sauce, and even Mummbah Sauce. Throughout the Petworth neighborhood there are scores of restaurants that offer Chinese carryout, fried chicken, and pizza all in one storefront, and they all have DC Mumbo Sauce. You’ll also find it in Chinatown.

Mumbo Sauce briefly gained nationwide fame on October 9, 2023, popular fast-food chain McDonald’s released their own version of the sauce as a limited time offering in their US locations. Alongside the dipping sauce’s release, they hosted a media campaign pairing with multiple content creators to promote the product, as well as developing a short YouTube documentary covering the sauce’s history.

What People are Watching

Ride or Die (Prime Video)

My favorite part of Ted Lasso was discovering the goddess that is Hannah Waddingham (and then learning that she’d played the nun who cries “Shame” while ringing a large bell, walking behind Cersei). As soon as I learned she was going to be playing an assassin I knew I had to see the show as soon as possible. This instinct was good, because the show, with costar, Octavia Spencer, is one of the best female-lead shows I’ve seen in a long time.