Thug Kitchen's Identity Finally Revealed

Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway, the duo behind Thug Kitchen. Photo credit: Matt Duckor, Epicurious

You are a food lover. You like profanity. You use the Internet.

If one or any of those things applies to you, you have likely heard of Thug Kitchen (“TK” for short), a vegan cooking site with healthy recipes, drool-worthy photos, and myriad f-bombs. But you have not heard just who was dropping those bombs, because despite the food media’s best efforts, the author has remained anonymous.

An example of TK’s tone, using less-profane-than-usual language: “Summer is winding down but there’s still some sweet produce left out there. Go grab some goddamn nectarines and make this pasta while you still can, before all-pumpkin-everything season starts.” Fox News described it as “if Martha Stewart, Dr. Dre and Tony Soprano wrote a blog” together. Gwyneth Paltrow called TK a “gangster vegan chef” on “The Rachel Ray Show.”

Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow. In large part thanks to their VIP fan, TK grew from a Tumblr, launched in August 2012, to a Real Website voted the best food blog by Saveur magazine in 2013. Its Twitter following was over 50,000 at press time, and on October 7, TK will publish a cookbook with Rodale.

So who will attend the book party, if the author is masked?

Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway will, Epicurious’ Matt Duckor revealed today. “You might think Thug Kitchen would be run by a pair of frat boys and a few pledge interns out of a house near campus, but Davis and Holloway have the type of energetic and friendly personalities needed to spawn an aspiring empire,” wrote Duckor, who spent time with the duo in Los Angeles.

He also revealed that neither was a food-world insider before launching TK. Epicurious has the exclusive on Davis’s and Holloway’s backgrounds, their shared cooking philosophy, and why they decided to stay anonymous—until now. Check it out here. And get their recipes for minestrone and enchiladas on Yahoo Food.