St. Elmo's famous sauce now for sale

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - One restaurant is a landmark in downtown Indianapolis. It's known as a steakhouse, but, the experience would not be complete without at least a sample of an appetizer - the restaurant's only appetizer.

The shrimp cocktail is legendary at the St. Elmo Steakhouse.

Proprietor Craig Huse says people that used to live in Indianapolis would always write and say, "Hey, can you send me some cocktail sauce for a family function or whatever. We used to do that, but, it's very difficult to do." 

They didn't know how to bottle it without the sauce losing its punch. Now, they do.   

"It took us a long time to be able to formulate something for the bottle that would have that spiciness sustained for a long period of time," Huse said. "So, we were able to work with a local provider to help us tweak the formula for something that's more bottle stable."

Huse says the recipe is the same as always, dating back to 1902, when St. Elmo opened. The power of this cocktail sauce comes from fresh ground horseradish. Every night, they make batch after batch. Huse said now they're able to "tweak the formula" to make it "more bottle stable."

Appropriately, word of mouth advertising did St. Elmo's marketing, at first. Supply kept up with the shipments.  Then, around Thanksgiving, Jim Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, posted a tweet about the new bottled cocktail sauce. 

More social media buzz followed.  

"And then as the orders kept piling in, it became, now we have a problem," Huse laughed. "We had to take it off the web site for a week just to catch up." 

The logistics issues must have been resolved. Huse says they'll ship another 1,000 bottles on Friday morning.

The bottles are in all 50 states now.

They're available at St. Elmo's, Harry & Izzy's, next door, and online at St.Elmo.com.