Urban Honking

Our sixth shout-out in a series of shout-outs to standout beer collections in the city of Los Angeles. And next stop on the Great L.A. Beer Run, slated to take place sometime in the next couple weeks. If you’re not familiar with Glendale, CA, some quick context is in order: Home to the largest Armenian […]

The old-school Romans made the simple pasta dish, carbonara, with three main ingredients: freshly milled black pepper, un-smoked baby pig’s cheek and raw egg. We love black pepper, but thought we’d do without the baby pig. We also forewent the standard cheese and raw egg for this recipe, so we’re using the term “carbonara” loosely. […]

by Aubrey “Bobby Beers” White A good Bloody Mary is hard to come by. Bartenders will begrudgingly mix you a shitty concoction of Mary-mix and vodka, glaring at you when you skimp on the tip. I’ve even been refused a Bloody Mary! Too much effort; too much sweat. I am, thusly, beyond appreciative when I […]

By Guest Knife Mike Meanstreetz This beer poem is the fourth installment of our on-going love letter to the best booze aisles in L.A. With the extended Hot Knives crew still recovering from a mad dash up to Portland this weekend we, this one is brought to you by Hot Knives’ friend and beer afficio-nah-do […]

One of our greatest fears — right up there with the fear that one of our favorite restaurants will pop up on a Rachel Ray show (it’s happened twice) — is that the recipes we toss out here become eye candy rather than useful recipes. Sure, it’s fun to ogle food, ours included, and we […]

Anyone who giggles at the abbreviation “pot salad” hasn’t worked in a commercial kitchen where space is so tight, and time so scrunched, that to write out “potato” on your masking tape-Tupperware label would be unthinkable. Suffice it to say neither of us much misses reaching an arm, all the way up the elbow, into […]

Number three in an ongoing roll call of L.A.’s best beer buying bodegas. This, for the record, was our first home away from home: our first beer store in California. On York and Ave. 57 there is a modest Mecca where over 450 types of beer have a regularly stocked home. Inside, past 500 different […]

Avery’s Hog Heaven The term “Barley Wine-style” is a new one on us. We like to think the guys at Avery Brewing Co. were making hand quotation marks as they seized on the phrase. That’s cuz Hog Heaven is hardly the malt bomb that you’d expect from a bottle with “Barley Wine” on the label. […]

This is the next installment in an on-going series highlighting some of the best, and brightest, beer fridges in Los Angeles. Beer heads muttering “7-11…WTF Hot Knives?” please read on! We’ve always known there was something strange about the 7-11 at Figueroa Street and Avenue 52 in the L.A. neighborhood of Highland Park. For one […]

We’re big fan of soy chorizo, or soyrizo, for two reasons: it’s malleable and it already reeks of cumin and other chili spices we would be spiking it with otherwise. The appeal of even meat chorizo, after all, is less the shit-quality butcher guts and more the spiced fat it releases when cooked. Here we […]