Michael Kurtz of Mike’s Hot Honey
Sweet Heat
WRITTEN BY Rebecca Flint Marx; PHOTOGRAPHED BY Michael Berman
LONG ISLAND CITY—In 2003, Michael Kurtz found true love in a pizza parlor. As a college student studying Portuguese in Brazil, he was on a hiking trip with a couple of buddies when they came upon a small town that happened to have a pizzeria. Although its menu was limited, it had something Kurtz had never seen before: bottles of chiliinfused honey on every table, to be drizzled over the pies. A self-proclaimed heat freak, Kurtz was intrigued. “I’m never satisfied by hot sauces,” he says. “They’re never hot enough. But this honey was ‘Wow.’”
Upon his return to the States, Kurtz, who’s lived in Long Island City for six years, began making his own version for family and friends. But it wasn’t until last summer that the public got its first taste, thanks to Kurtz’s other passion: pizza.
A music-licensing supervisor by day, he began moonlighting in the kitchen of Paulie Gee’s, a Greenpoint pizzeria. When he introduced his honey to Paul Giannone, the restaurant’s owner, Giannone was “apprehensive—he doesn’t like spicy food,” Kurtz recalls. But he soon became enough of a convert to make the honey the star of a pie called, appropriately, the “Hellboy.” And so Mike’s Hot Honey was born.
Soon, customers began requesting bottles of the incendiary stuff, which Kurtz makes in the restaurant’s kitchen. So he decided to “slap some labels on the bottles and make a go of it.” He officially launched his company to retailers in August, and now his $8 12-ounce bottles are available in a number of locations listed on his website, where customers can also place online orders.
The “hot” in Kurtz’s honey comes from a combustible mix of vinegar and chili peppers. Although he won’t specify exactly which chilies he uses, he does allow that they’re imported from Brazil. And the honey itself comes from an apiary in Pennsylvania. While he’d like to use local honey, Kurtz says, “no one ever makes enough.”
As the popularity of his product has grown, Kurtz has had to start thinking about slowly scaling up his business. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” he says, but admits that he needs to start hiring extra hands. He produced 1,000 bottles in the month of May alone. “It’s like being a monk,” he says happily. “I do it every day.”
WHERE TO BUY
To order, visit mikeshothoney.com.
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