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I loved it a lot more than my music industry day job.”Ĭustomers were soon raving about the honey they tasted on the pizza and began asking where they could buy it, so Kurtz started selling it in plastic containers at the restaurant. It’s open to the floor of the restaurant, so when you’re making pizzas you’re able to interact with the guests, and I just loved it. “We call the kitchen the ‘pizza theater’ at Paulie Gee’s. Meanwhile, Kurtz had decided to follow his heart and become a full-time pizza cook at the restaurant. The pizza baron liked it so much, he made it a featured ingredient on the restaurant’s Hellboy pizza. He was still making his hot honey on the side and brought some in for restaurant owner Paulie Giannone to try. In the summer of 2010, Kurtz found himself working at a music industry booking agency during the day, and at Paulie Gee’s pizzeria in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, at night. “When I tasted the combination of the chili-infused honey drizzled over pizza, I was blown away.”Īfter returning home from his travels in 2004, Kurtz began making chili pepper-infused honey for his own personal consumption. “There was a pizzeria with jars of honey that had chili peppers sitting in them for drizzling on top of the pizzas,” he says. In 2003, Kurtz and some friends were traveling and, after a hiking trip, landed in a small town in Brazil, looking for something to eat. People tasting the product experience the sweetness of the honey first, Kurtz says, followed by the spicy kick on the back of the palate from the chili peppers. A few months ago, it even won the Front Burner Foodservice Pitch Competition at the Specialty Food Association’s Summer Fancy Food Show. The versatile condiment, made using Brazilian chili peppers and wildflower honey from upstate New York, has been gaining traction among consumers, chefs, and mixologists throughout the country. where he was working-that he launched Mike’s Hot Honey. Mike Kurtz actually stumbled upon the idea for chili pepper-infused honey at a pizzeria, in Brazil, but it was years later, at another pizzeria-this time in Brooklyn, N.Y. The founder of Mike’s Hot Honey admits he’s “more of a pizza guy than a honey guy,” but that turned out to be one of the key ingredients to his success in the honey business. A pizzeria in Brazil was the unlikely inspiration for this chili pepper-infused honey, which recently won the Front Burner Foodservice Pitch Competition at the Summer Fancy Food Show.