Downtown Las Vegas’s Hamsa Brand Turns Up the Heat With a Squeezable Harissa Sauce
The new hot sauce co-founders are lighting up taste buds with their spicy harissa condiments, one bottle at a time
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More than two years ago, Joanna Bensimon was about to indulge in a homemade falafel feast at her McNeil Estates home when she felt, suddenly, that the spread required a dipping sauce. Her husband, Michael Vakneen, a classically trained chef, was at work, and her mother, a personal chef and caterer, had just flown home to New York after visiting the young couple. As an experienced cook herself, Bensimon shuffled through the refrigerator and found the harissa — a flavorful blend of ground-up dried chile peppers, spices, and oil — that her Moroccan mother had made for them before she left.