Workbench Gourmet: Hardware and Food Collide

EVEN FOODIES with lifetime subscriptions to Gourmet and Bon Appetit have probably never served cake on a glass brick or blown molten sugar into bonbons through PVC pipe.

But Katsuya Fukushima, chef at Cafe Atlantico and mini bar (405 8th St. NW) has. Like many pros, he often whips up dishes with gadgets that are more Home Depot than Home Ec. He loves to wander through Lowe's, dreaming of ways to use backyard tools in front of the backsplash — think a Dremel put into service stuffing pita rounds with cheddar mousse. "I don't always know what I am going to use something for," Fukushima says. "But I walk through every aisle."

Anybody who's ever used a (clean) paintbrush to lacquer meat with sauce on the barbecue knows the tool shed can help with party prep. But in this age of molecular gastronomy and power-grilling, adventurous cooks are finding that kitchen experiments often lead to the hardware store. It's because the utilitarian tools and toys DIYers use to lay tile or paint walls also work on stovetops, grilltops and even buffet tables. "People come in for twine for cooking," says Robbie Kaplan, buyer at Tenleytown ACE Hardware (4500 Wisconsin Ave. NW). "And at Thanksgiving, they get buckets for brining turkeys."

Ways to repurpose tough stuff are as numerous as hammers on a construction site. Chef Tom Meyer of Alexandria's Bar Baudelaire & Le Gaulois (116 King St.) bends window screens into serving platters. On "Good Eats," Alton Brown seems to borrow gear from "This Old House": a Sheetrock knife to scoop chopped veggies, Kevlar gloves for grilling. His "Gear for Your Kitchen" ($18, Stewart, Tabori & Chang) details how to douse lettuce with dressing via a garden spray bottle or roast a chicken in unpainted terra cotta pots.

Why take things from the toolbox to the kitchen? Hardware store merch tends to be durable, and it's often cheaper to raid Home Depot than Sur La Table. A full-sized blowtorch to caramelize sugar on a crème brulee runs around $20 at a hardware store; fancy kitchen models are twice that at Williams-Sonoma. Kitchen shop pastry brushes go for about $8; Lowe's charges a buck or two.

Indie hardware stores are also hip to customers seeking to stock both workbenches and pantries. Capitol Hill's Frager's (1115 Pennsylvania Ave. SE) and Arlington's Ayer's Variety and Hardware (5853 N. Washington Blvd.) not only hawk trad tools that can be used in non-trad ways (a garden trowel as a pie server!) but also well-priced kitchen-specific items: coffee makers, knives.

Snagging measuring cups and mixing bowls alongside fertilizer and paint is especially appealing to urbanites. "There are a lot more hardware stores out there than kitchen stores," says Hyattsville federal contractor Cameron McPhee, 32, who scored a spackling spatula at Tenleytown ACE Hardware (4500 Wisconsin Ave. NW) to ice layers of a wedding cake she's baking for a friend.

Still, before you raid a DIY store for dinner-party supplies, ask an employee whether that tool is food-safe — you don't want to serve toxins with your appetizers. Glazes on some terra cotta pots, for example, may contain lead that could leach into vittles.

And if you think of some way to repurpose a tool, you might get rich. Ontario's Lorraine Lee was baking a cake more than a decade ago when she borrowed her husband's rasp (a woodworking tool) and rubbed an orange across it, producing a pile of zest. The Lees proceeded to market a stainless-steel rasp with a zester holder on their Web site (Leevalley.com), inventing the microplane grater you probably have in your cucina. Maybe your flower pot cake pan is next.

Written by Express contributor Amy Rogers Nazarov