Urban Honking

This weekend, on a testosterone-heavy desert camping sojourn, our friend Spencer enlightened us regarding a high-school epiphany he once had: that Salsa Verde Doritos and a 20-ounce Coca-Cola are the “perfect combination” of flavors. We’re still not entirely sure what this means. But the comment did inspire us, when perusing the produce aisle of the […]

Our buddy Kevin looks like a frugal dude. We were fooled. When Kevin, a small Pasadena craft beer distributor, was up in Portland he splurged on an unrivaled flute of aged brews from one of his connections, Hair of the Dog Brewing. He purchased one bottle of every single batch of Doggie Claws, their special […]

Our tinted Suburban pulled into the reputed ghost town of Terlingua, Texas at 4:20 on Super Bowl Sunday, which did not explain why the faded general store offered one long row of shaded, splintered benches occupied by sleeping dogs and old ranchers gripping warm bottles of yellow beer. Not Steelers fans! A pretty but leather-faced […]

Contrary to our belief, the Jerusalem Artichoke has absolutely nothing to do with the contested city home to various peoples of the book. It’s actually an American o.g. : a tuber that finds its roots from Nova Scotia all the way to Georgia. First eaten by a European in 1605, the artichoke tasting relative of […]

Date: January 28, 2009 Time: 9:00 pm Location: Mike’s house Mike Merrill Josh Berezin Judah Switzer Jona Bechtolt Claire Evans Marcus Estes 72/1000: Red Tail Ale, Mendocino Brewing Company, California JB: This isn’t like a ritualized thing, guys, we can just drink and talk about it. ME: Don’t you raise a toast or something? JB: […]

Date: January 28, 2009 Time: 9:00 pm Location: Mike’s house Mike Merrill Josh Berezin Judah Switzer Jona Bechtolt Claire Evans Marcus Estes 72/1000: Red Tail Ale, Mendocino Brewing Company, California JB: This isn’t like a ritualized thing, guys, we can just drink and talk about it. ME: Don’t you raise a toast or something? JB: […]

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: composed salads are probably our favorite thing to make, even more favored to eat. This one is a bit of a mish mash of components; but they all reconcile in your mouth in a really radical way. Like the port city in France where the most […]

Drive south along the San Diego shoreline in fall, spin inland toward the breweries of San Marcos and Escondido, grab a pint of double-hopped West Coast IPA at a beach-front pizzeria in Carlsbad and you’ll deeply comprehend why Southern California beer tingles: It is the epitome of nature in a bottle, from a place where […]

Like discoveries in other experimental fields, the ones that happen in the kitchen are often rooted in mistakes. When way too many black peppercorns got dumped into hot oil for a pre-bean fry, it seemed they were lost. What to do with a pile of soggy greasy peppercorns? We got to thinking about pepper and […]

Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches make some people squirm. Not we! In fact, we’re always looking for other non-traditional applications for the succulent salty cylinders. This week we found one in real way! We’d heard tell of a hipster taqueria here in Los Angeles that’s become infamous for its beef and pickle tacos. Now, we […]