Rude to put hot sauce in your buddy's gumbo?

No.... you eating it not him

Stupid question. Once it's in there you can't take it out. Always conservative with spice, especially if your guests love of spice is diverse.

That's why it's on the table.

As a Murican, I simply don't care. If there's hot sauce to be had, I'm adding it.

I also put hot sauce on my hot sauce.

No, especially if he has hot sauce available for guests to use.

Only if you've tasted it first and made a face or said, "Ew."

Hell no!

Absolutely not. If I were making gumbo for a group I would deliberately tone down the spice so that those who want the sauce can add their own, me included.

Perhaps, but not sure rude is always the right word. A more pressing question might be why you feel the need for heat in a gumbo in the first place rather than salt, or nothing at all.

I'm not a fan of ketchup, steak seasoning, Tony's, or hot sauce on a table to begin with. I think it's like putting paint on a table and tempting the audience to slap some on the painting. Kind of defeats the whole point. Salt isn't an issue because it just intensifies the flavors already in there on your tongue. When someone really cooks food, and takes the time to really do it up for example, and incorporates flavors and paints the canvas, especially if they knock it out the park, when someone adds different flavors because they're accustomed to doing it out of habit or familiarity before tasting and enjoying the flavors intended to be there, it's kind of a little of a FU to the guy who painted the flavor canvas your putting more paint not intended to be there in the dish. Or maybe reading a story, and taking a red marker and adding unnecessary stuff to it that kind of screws it up because you wanted it to go in a different direction.

But truthfully, for gumbo especially, I don't understand the need for heat in the first place, especially when people want to get it super hot. All you end up doing is screwing up your palate so you can't taste anything but the heat. It ruins it. I mean, I guess if it were hot wings from Buffalo Wild Wings, instead of somebody's gumbo, who cares?

A lot of people intentionally tone down there dishes such as gumbo because people's tastes are different. Better to make it not spicy enough for some and have them add it than make it too spicy.