Most pantry brands start with a product. Fox Gourmet started with a restaurant.
It Started With Catering
In 2002, Chef Melissa Fox launched her first catering company. The sauces and dishes that would eventually define Fox Gourmet took shape here — recipes developed for real events, for guests who kept asking the same question after dinner: can I take some of this home?
That question is the entire premise of the brand. Nothing on the Fox Gourmet shelf was invented for retail. Everything was proven on a table first.
Then a Restaurant
By 2008, those recipes moved into a full restaurant — one of the only Nicaraguan restaurants in New York City at the time. It ran for a decade, earned a Zagat rating, and was featured in the Michelin Guide. Press coverage followed, from The New York Times to Food & Wine.
Nicaraguan food isn't one of the more visible Latin cuisines on most American menus — Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican dishes tend to dominate that conversation. Building a restaurant around it, and having it work for ten years, meant the food had to hold its own without relying on familiarity.
Then the Jar
Fox Gourmet is what happened when the restaurant closed but the recipes didn't. The sazon, the picante, the chimichurri — these were menu items first, built to be cooked to order in a working kitchen. Turning them into shelf-stable, small-batch products meant translating restaurant technique into something that holds up in a jar, not diluting a recipe to make it easier to manufacture.
That's still the standard: bold, generous, built for the table — not engineered for a factory line.
What "Small-Batch" Actually Means Here
It's not a marketing word. It's a production choice. Small batches mean the seasonings don't sit losing potency in a warehouse, and the sauces taste like they came out of a kitchen because they did. Every product is handcrafted, not scaled down from an industrial recipe with the corners smoothed off.
Nicaraguan Roots, Latin Table
The products draw on Nicaraguan tradition specifically, and Latin cooking broadly — not one cuisine, but a way of cooking that shows up across the pantry: bold seasoning, generous portions, food built to be shared.
That's the through-line from the catering company in 2002, to the restaurant in 2008, to the jar on your counter now. Same kitchen. Same standard. Different container.