As consumers become more familiar with authentic cuisine from Mexico, South and Central America and the Caribbean, salsa's role at ethnic restaurants has dramatically changed. Cobian, in fact, doesn't automatically offer the once-requisite free salsa and chips unless asked.

Instead, this chef — who learned to cook from his mother while grow- ing up in Jalisco, Mexico — pairs his made-from-scratch sauces with very traditional Mexican fare.

He's served green tomatillo salsa made with tomatillos, grilled onions and roasted pumpkin seeds with carne asada and chicken; as a side dish; "and even with chips if guests request it," he reports.

He's rested grilled pork tenderloin atop a pool of creamy chipotle and roasted tomato salsa spiced with grilled onions, garlic, salt and oregano.

He's created crema poblano salsa with poblano peppers, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and a touch of sour cream to accompany his enchiladas and chicken and shrimp dishes.

Traditional salsas like Cobian's aren't the only sauces spicing up the restaurant scene. Just visit Tio's Mexican restaurant in Ann Arbor, Mich. on the first Sunday of every month and you'll see how important hot sauces are to the mix. While the town might not sound like a hotbed of Hispanic food, Tio's' Salsa Sundays have been, well — hot — for more than a decade. The draw? The selection of 75 to 80 hot sauces and salsas owners Tim and Harriet Seaver offer with chips, crackers and a spicy cream cheese spread to Sunday patrons. And everything is free.

"We started it to build Sunday afternoon business 10 to 12 years ago," Harriet recalls. "In our downtown location, we got so many people coming there was almost no room for customers to eat lunch!"

Though the sauces come mostly from the U.S., exotic offerings from Mexico, Jamaica and Thailand are also part of the mix, Harriet says.

In addition to the hot sauces, the Seavers give guests booklets with blank pages on which they can jot down the retail hot sauces they've sampled. "They can write down what they've tried and rate each sauce," Harriet explains. "Once they've tried 100 kinds, they get a t-shirt that says they've tried 100 hot sauces at Tio's. They also get their name in a pepper on the Wall of Flame."

Hot sauces have even become a side business at Tio's. They make and sell their own No. 4 X-tra Hot Sauce (which took first place in the annual Fiery Food Challenge in Albuquerque, N.M. in 1997), and also purvey hot sauces from the restaurant's fully stocked hot sauce collection.