Who: Colin Howard
What: Lead Distiller at House Spirits Distillery
Where: Portland, Oregon

Colin Howard of House Spirits Distillery—makers of the much-adored (and personal favorite!) Aviation Gin—leads a small distillation team in Portland, where he's responsible for dreaming up new spirits (depending on season and collaboration) all in service of the quality products that put this company on the map in 2005. Here's one more reason to celebrate an artisan maker in Portland, Oregon. Bottoms up! More

Who: Ben Jacobsen
What: Jacobsen Salt
Where: North Oregon Coast

Salt is so basic, elemental, and simple. It's one of the one of the oldest local foods, having been harvested by sea–faring people for thousands of years. You could argue that it is the one cooking ingredient with the strongest sense of place, locality, history and importance. Salt is essential. Ben Jacobsen believes everyone deserves hand-harvested sea salt, so he gathers buckets of brine from the blustery Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oregon (about 80 miles from Portland) and transforms them into glorious white crystals. More

Who: Suzanne Fuoco
What: Pink Slip Jam
Where: Portland, Oregon

Suzanne Fuoco's background in fine art and cooking come together beautifully in her 3-year–old company, Pink Slip Jam. Her products taste like something from a fairy tale, as flowers, local produce, spirits, essential oils and spices collide into the most innovative jam flavors. Once you've gone Pink Slip Jam, your toast will never be the same. Here's a conversation with Suzanne and a peek into the kitchen where she concocts her jams.

More

Who: Kim Boyce
What: BakeShop
Where: Portland, Oregon

Kim Boyce is a celebrated cookbook author and whole grain baker. (We've featured her James Beard award-winning cookbook Good to the Grain several times here on The Kitchn.) She recently opened a retail space, BakeShop, in a family neighborhood of North East Portland. Her confections are unbelievable and her cheerful attitude infectious. More

Who: Kim and Tyler Malek - these two are cousins!
What: Salt and Straw, artisan ice cream
Where: Portland, Oregon

If you live in Portland, you know that Salt & Straw is really popular. What started as a small, hand–pushed ice cream cart has turned into a celebrated community hang out with a constant, gigantic line out the door—all within a year's time. And their list of innovative and ridiculously seasonal flavors is about as long as their ever–present queue of excited customers. More

Jeni Britton Bauer has a thing or two to tell artisans who want to create and sell good local food. "Be a rock star. You have to go out there and go at it like you're trying to be President of the United States." In other words, you probably need to do what she did: Work 80 hours a week. Don't take a salary for years. Be on your toes every single day. This is part of Jeni's story, which has become a story of truly local food making good on a wildly successful scale.

We visited Jeni a few weeks ago to hear her story in person, and to visit the kitchen where all her delicious ice cream is made. But that's not all: She's working on a book, and we wanted a sneak peek of the goodies that home cooks are going to get when it's released next summer. More

Who: Middle West Spirits micro-distillery
What: High-quality artisanal spirits made from local Ohio ingredients
Where: Columbus, Ohio

If you wanted to make a hand-crafted liquor with a "sense of place," then vodka, the most neutral and flavorless spirit, would be an odd place to start. Brady Konya and Ryan Lang, founders of Middle West Spirits, laugh as they acknowledge this irony. "Artisan vodka" almost seems like a contradiction in terms but somehow, they have created a vodka that does indeed have a sense of location in its environment, and their OYO Vodka is not actually a flavorless, neutral spirit at all — it's something very different.

Come walk through the Middle West Spirits micro-distillery in Columbus, Ohio, and see what it takes to distill a great bottle of vodka — and more. More

Who: Young and Kenneth
What: The Winey Neighbor, a boutique wine shop
Where: Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

Sometime last year I noticed work had begun on an empty storefront on Washington Avenue in my neighborhood of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. My curiosity piqued—Man, please let it be something cool and not another boring real estate office—I was encouraged when I saw a blue and white polka dot awning go up, with a cheeky name: The Winey Neighbor. A wine shop with a sense of humor? Sign me up.

It would still be many months before I'd meet the owners, husband-and-wife duo Kenneth and Young, or attend one of their community wine tastings, or buy a killer bottle of wine (for around $12) based on the type of music it'd pair best with. (We'll get to that). In the meantime I watched the ins-and-outs of construction workers on that storefront, caught glimpses of movement behind the brown-papered windows, and waited for opening day. More

Name: America's Test Kitchen
Location: Brookline, MA
Size: 2,500 square feet

If you didn't know it was there, you'd never assume an authority on recipe testing and development was housed in a simple brick building surrounded by condos and coffee shops. Like its popular magazines, America's Test Kitchen doesn't look flashy, but inside it is buzzing with energy and expertise. I took a peek behind the cameras to see how a typical day runs at the culinary nerve center responsible for two TV shows, two magazines, a handful of websites, and countless cookbooks.

More

If you've ever flown into or out of the San Francisco airport, you have probably looked out the window and wondered about those weird red ponds scattered along the edge of the Bay. Wonder no more: they're sea salt harvesting ponds!

I was recently invited along on Diamond Crystal Salt's annual sea salt harvest right here in the San Francisco Bay. Let me tell you, it was a fascinating trip from Bay to box. Oh, and why the startling red color in those ponds? You'll never guess. More