America loves Heinz ketchup. Love love loves. They put in slather it on everything. It's not the worst.
It tastes too sweet, too tomatoey, there's way too many polysyllabic additives in there. It's monotonic...the sweet-umami note hits hard, and that's all there is. It's not a complex flavor, there's no subtleties. Not that you want your sauce to take away the crown of your dish, but a complex sauce can interact with your food in interesting ways to give a multilayered taste profile. So many things happening on your tongue at the same time. Heinz does not do that. It's got a bit of a dang, a slight funk, barely a note and that's it. It's the least offensive of all dips and sauces I can think of. And that's the best compliment I can think for it: it's so very inoffensive, unless you really dislike the extra unbalanced sweetness in your sauce.
The Maggi Hot & Sour is different. It's beastly. It's spicy actually spicy that will leave burning sensation on your tongue for many minutes after you've had it. It has the sour tang much more pronounced than heinz. It's got a lot less 'rotten tomato' essence than heinz. If there's as much sugar as heinz -- and it most certainly does not -- it is imperceptible, yet the hot and sour are not overpowering. The mildly sweet aftertaste leaves you wanting more, makes many a child lick on their plate of noodle or fries.
American taste palette has adjusted to Heinz, American culinary culture has evolved around it. Chefs will develop recipes to go exactly with heinz, multinational breeders will breed potatoes that complement that flavor the most when deep fried in oil. And Heinz is still not a punch-out winner, with all the unfair cultural advantages it has, not by a long-shot to folks who don't already have a deep attachment to it. It's an American thing of a certain time an era, a food of nostalgia not of inherent flavor.
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