THE GURGLING COD: What's that on your burger? You've probably never heard of it.

So, the conversation about artisanal and fautisanal rolls along, this time with some actual good news. Through the good offices of specialty-foods kingpin Rick "Rick's Picks" Field, the Cod got hooked up with some newcomers in the condiment world. If you wear Dockers, drive a minivan, or listen to Coldplay, these are not for you. Stick with your comfortable suburban life-in-death, and keep slathering your burgers with Heinz, and keep that bottle of what you probably call "rooster sauce" you got that one time you attempted to escape from the beige hell of your life with Thai cooking classes at the local community college in the door of your fridge. I think there's a new episode of Family Guy for you to watch.

But! If you prefer a zesty life, and have not tired of food made from ingredients, rather than in factories, consider these alternatives:

1) Sir Kensington's Scooping Ketchup. It takes some getting used to, but what you realize you are getting used to is a ketchup that does not taste like Heinz, and is neither Hunt's nor store brand. It tastes like a smooth tomato chutney, because that's what ketchup is if you make it the right way. Rather than the orchestrated homogeny of the flavor notes in Heinz -- HFCS, mostly -- you taste ingredients. There is regular and spiced, and the spiced splits the difference between BBQ sauce and ketchup, minus the cloying sweetness of either. Looking forward to a full scale burger road test for the spiced. The regular Kensington's upgrades a burger, but I suspect the spiced would transform it.

2) Jojo's. Way more underground than Sir Kensington's, which, after all you can get at Dean & DeLuca, which means even people from Fairfield can get their hands on it. Jojo's does not even have a website, just a FB page. If you saw all the bands at CMJ last summer on a roof in Brooklyn, you will like JoJo'. The packaging is a squiggle from a Sharpie on the lid of a tiny jar. (If Marcel the Shell were to get in the speciality food racket, it would look like this.) More even than the Sir Kensington's one is aware of a food made out of what it is made out of -- it takes some adjustment to get used to "local, organic chili peppers, organic vinegar, organic evaporated palm sugar, organic garlic, sea salt, love" Jojo is still tinkering with the pepper mix, but the versions The Cod sampled were full of flavor and heat, without fratastic excesses liable to blister you from your guggle to your zatch. Any knucklehead can make a hot sauce. It takes finesse to make a spicy condiment. Kensington and Jojo get it -- they will spoil you for the pedestrian world of Heinz, Huy Fong, and quiet desperation.