You're free to make whatever mistaken assumptions you like about the kind of places I go and the kind of travel I do. You're wrong, obviously, but it's not like I can prove that any more than you can.
Some unlikely places where I've found Tabasco, though:
- at a cockfighting ring in rural Mindanao, Philippines.
- in a yurt camp in rural central Kyrgyzstan only accessible by horse
- at the galley on a Taiwanese container ship transiting the Panama canal
- seemingly everywhere in Japan, from cafes to fancy restaurants to izakayas to convenience stores on remote islands to random old peoples' houses in the countryside. "Tabasuko" is literally the Japanese word for hot sauce.
You are perhaps directionally correct if you say that many places have a non-tabasco table condiment which is their first choice for spice, and if that's the point you are trying to make then I will agree and let that be that. But in the "hot sauce" category, if they have "hot sauce", it's more likely than not that "tabasco" will be an option, if not the first choice, if not the only choice, and that is the point I am making here. There are of course certain places where it is more or less common, but that's hardly surprising. However I reiterate: in my (probably 99th percentile well-traveled, mostly in out of the way places, especially in asia) experience you can find tabasco basically anywhere on the planet, including some somewhat surprising places, to the extent that I think that, if there is such a thing as "the world's hot sauce", it is without doubt which hot sauce it would be.
Some unlikely places where I've found Tabasco, though:
- at a cockfighting ring in rural Mindanao, Philippines.
- in a yurt camp in rural central Kyrgyzstan only accessible by horse
- at the galley on a Taiwanese container ship transiting the Panama canal
- seemingly everywhere in Japan, from cafes to fancy restaurants to izakayas to convenience stores on remote islands to random old peoples' houses in the countryside. "Tabasuko" is literally the Japanese word for hot sauce.
You are perhaps directionally correct if you say that many places have a non-tabasco table condiment which is their first choice for spice, and if that's the point you are trying to make then I will agree and let that be that. But in the "hot sauce" category, if they have "hot sauce", it's more likely than not that "tabasco" will be an option, if not the first choice, if not the only choice, and that is the point I am making here. There are of course certain places where it is more or less common, but that's hardly surprising. However I reiterate: in my (probably 99th percentile well-traveled, mostly in out of the way places, especially in asia) experience you can find tabasco basically anywhere on the planet, including some somewhat surprising places, to the extent that I think that, if there is such a thing as "the world's hot sauce", it is without doubt which hot sauce it would be.