New restaurant going into old Joon, Burgrito, Double S BBQ spot | Restaurants

He also offers one takeout, ready-to-eat meal as well as a meal kit that customers need to cook themselves. People order online.

One of the recent meal kits featured jalapeno and cheddar corn fritters with ricotta crema and maple-glazed bacon. Customers get the fritter batter and bacon in Mason jars and then fry the fritters themselves. Fritters don’t do well when they come already made and packaged, he said.

Hamilton’s chicken dijonnaise meal kits with chicken thighs, homemade crème fraîche, and Dijon mustard, have also been well-received. He puts videos on his website showing how to make each of the meals.

He cooks his food in the kitchen at Gaylord Catering Service, 709 Atlas Ave., and has customers pick up from another East Side location.

When Hamilton opens his dining room on Monroe Street will depend on what his peer restaurants decide to do, but he said it doesn’t make sense to open at 25% capacity.

“I don’t want to do it until everybody’s safe,” he said, adding that it won’t happen until summer at the earliest. “It’s not even on my radar right now.”

His plan is to fix up the kitchen first and start making his meal kits there. He’ll eventually have pickups on Monroe Street, as well as on the East Side.

The business’ name comes from the old saying about “the pot calling the kettle black.” The pot is also black, just like the kettle, Hamilton said. “They’re both black and the pot has no reason to call the kettle black, because they’re both dirty, but there’s another interpretation that’s a little more archaic.”