Even if you’re not a hot-sauce enthusiast, you may find yourself a little watery-eyed over the story of David Tran, the 68-year-old chief executive of Huy Fong Foods. The maker of America’s best-known Sriracha—a Southeast Asian chili sauce with a zealous following—Huy Fong is named for the ship from which Tran alighted in America after leaving his native Vietnam in the late 1970s. The company’s Rooster logo, which gave rise to the sobriquet “cock sauce,” is Tran’s Zodiac sign.

According to legend, Tran started out selling his sauce out of buckets to restaurants in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1980. Nearly 35 years after establishing Huy Fong, the clear bottle with the green top is the centerpiece of a $60 million company, selling as many as 20 million bottles in 2012. Tran’s Sriracha is now produced in a 650,000-square-foot factory about 30 minutes east of Los Angeles. In 2009, it was named "Ingredient of the Year" by Bon Appétit. It has also been the inspiration for documentaries, cookbooks, art exhibits, countless internet paeans, and, as you'll likely see this week, Halloween costumes.

Until recently, Tran eschewed publicity and when I arrived to meet him earlier this month, an indication of that erstwhile wariness materialized in the form of a burly, armed security guard who approached me to ask me my business just seconds after I’d parked in the small visitor section of the factory parking lot.   

Earlier this year, Tran decided to open the gates of his factory to tours. The decision wasn’t the result of some Roald Dahl-esque turn of heart, but rather, of some duress. Back in April, Huy Fong’s facility in Irwindale, California, had been declared a public nuisance after the city had received complaints from nearby residents alleging that the fumes from the factory were causing headaches, nosebleeds, heartburn, and a variety of respiratory ailments. The declaration followed a lawsuit by the city and a partial shutdown of the factory last year, which incited a panic among the faithful about a Sriracha shortage.

"The tours,” Tran told me, “are the only way to prove that we don't make tear gas."

The efforts worked. Well, the efforts, girded by out-of-state wooing of Huy Fong and some election-year pro-business posturing, eventually resulted in the lawsuit and nuisance issue both being dropped in late May.

During the ordeal, the extent of the Sriracha fandom revealed itself. Around the time the 2013 lawsuit against Huy Fong was filed, the first-ever L.A. Sriracha Festival was held in Los Angeles, featuring Sriracha-inspired dishes by some of the city’s best-known chefs.

"That was the first indication that there were crazy Sriracha people out there,” Donna Lam, the executive operations officer of Huy Fong, told me. “People who would want to dress like Sriracha, people who would pay $50 to eat Sriracha food."

As chili-grinding season kicked off in late September, Sriracha people had also appeared by the thousands to attend "open houses" at the Huy Fong factory. Visitors would get to see some of the season's 57,000 tons of red jalapeños go from pepper to paste, tour the massive facility, sample Sriracha ice cream, and maybe catch a glimpse of Tran himself.

My Sriracha immersion at the factory began with the ritual slipping on of a hairnet. I was shepherded around by Christy, who has been living in Irwindale for over a decade. She told me that nearly 2,000 people had flooded the factory at the most recent open house.

Our first stop was a room that had become something of a Sriracha shrine. It included a life-sized cut-out of David Tran, plaques, awards, pictures, artwork, love letters to Sriracha, and, of course, customized fire extinguishers.