Urban Honking

Tom met Andy nearly 20 years ago. They’re both vegetarians and practicing Buddhists. Both sweet guys with good taste. Tom and Andy met the Hot Knives blog about 2 months ago when they wrote to us about catering their wedding. We sat down for wine and menu chit-chat when they dropped the bomb, “It’s not […]

Cave-aged IPAs? OK, it’s not doctor recommended, kid-tested or mother approved. Most brew hoarders go by the eenie-meanie-miney-mo-if-its-hoppy-let-it-go mantra, so they only age high-alcohol beers. And we’re sure there’s some scientific sense in that. But we also know that there are exceptions to every rule. So along with the bourbon-barrel 750 ml’s that grace every […]

Trumpets please. Ahem. One year and a half after we first birthed this cacamamy scheme to cellar some of our beer purchases, our “Beer Cave” is finally mature (give or take a few repeat bottles, which will come in handy for taste-offs). That’s right, our stash has finally surpassed the official “99 bottles of beer” […]

This will not top the soup that quasi-inspired it, let’s get that outta the way right quick. That’d be the leek hash and pea soup with almond butter we had ladled for us tableside at Melisse in Santa Monica on a recent spat of pricey visits that we made for celebration’s sake and to write […]

We did not pull this name outta nowhere: The Frogs sometimes refer to their national salad as Insalata Nizzarda, more popularly known as the nicoise. The mother of all deconstructed salads. The Foucault of lettuce. With its cold, charred peppers, slim haricot vert, plump, briny olives. plus a starch and a protein to boot. We’re […]

One of us had our first taste of muhammara — the nutty pink paste of walnuts and charred bell peppers — on a dashing date with a gorgeous lady friend. The other one of us tried muhammara for the first time just two hours later eating take-out remnants from that date, out of a grease-stained […]

The new collaboration brew by San Diego saints Stone and Alesmith and Denmark droogie Mikkeller — a surprisingly gentle triple-like Belgian-ish beer without a name — raises more questions than it does answers. For starters, was it brewed in SD or the EU? Did the three brewers meet at one location with their respective suitcases […]

We love to love our tomatoes. When we find plump beauties at our favorite farmer’s stand we begin a slow but brief affair, one of pampering, seduction and ultimately consumption. Like any fruit, tomatoes are best when they are ripe so we like to lay ours down to rest for a few days sometime a […]

The long foggy mornings of late are some of the few and brief signs that the seasons are changing in California. The Fall, known throughout the rest of our country as a time of foliage fireworks and chilling temperatures, typically means little more in LA than change is coming in vegatable patches and fruit trees. […]

Pulse. Mix. Blend. By any other name, Cuisinart-ing an ingredient — known to some as ‘cuisin’ the juice’ — is one of the most crucial kitchen skills that gets overlooked by the kind of cheapskates that we typically run with. Knives? Sure. Cutting boards, measuring cups, oven mitt or even cast-iron skillets: most hip, ragamuffin […]