Let’s be upfront: I’m a Heinz devotee, and I’m not shy about it. When I come across menus that advertise some artisanal house-made ketchup instead, I wonder why the chef doesn’t do something more worthwhile with his time, like build a better french fry. As far as I’m concerned, ketchup was perfected long ago, and you know it when you see the number 57 on the bottle. Heinz’s overwhelmingly popular formula, as the New Yorker astutely observed back in 2004, hits all five fundamental tastes on the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. You can’t really do much better than that. Complain all you want about high-fructose corn syrup — Heinz has an answer for that, too. Lately, I’ve noticed a few restaurants offering a different kind of ketchup, one with some stuffy-looking mustachioed stranger wearing a monocle and top hat on the label, called Sir Kensington’s. The sheer presence of this dubious parvenu is often enough to make me change my side order from fries to salad. Read my full article at Food Republic.