Skip to main content

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

Khalil Tawil Posted on Craigslists for Home Cooked Meals

By Cator Sparks Published August 6, 2021

Today we meet Khalil Tawil, Co-Founder and CEO, Umi Kitchen.

I’m a graduate of West Point, former U.S. Army infantry officer, veteran of three deployments to Afghanistan, and JD candidate at Yale Law.

Recommended Videos

The idea for Umi Kitchen was inspired by my mother (“Umi” is the Arabic word for “my mother”). She immigrated from Lebanon to Montana in 1976. To make ends meet in those early days, she used to cook Lebanese food with my grandmother and sell it at a local farmer’s market.

When I was in the Army, she would vacuum seal and send me her cooking wherever I was stationed. While at Yale, I was craving a home cooked meals but I was too busy to actually cook, so I posted on Craigslist offering to pay someone to make me a home cooked meal and within 24 hours I had 17 responses. This made me realize there was a need in the market for connecting home cooks with hungry consumers.

Hallie (a friend from Yale) and I teamed up and created a community of home cooks who create small batches of their signature meals. Our first Umi cook in New Haven was my mother! She flew out from Arizona and cooked 80 meals in four days out of my studio apartment. We delivered them to New Haven students and families, and the rest is history. After successfully serving over 500 meals to the New Haven community with dozens of New Haven Umi cooks, we decided to bring the idea to New York!

We’re currently live in Brooklyn and Manhattan and excited to be unleashing the hidden home cooking talent within NYC’s diverse communities.

As for my personal style:

Jeans: Nudie Thin Finn
Shirts: Uniqlo Oxfords
Pants: Massimo Dutti Chinos
Suits: The Lazio from Suit Supply
Shoes: Vans Authentic Sneakers and Billy Reid Loafers
Accessories: Kle tterworks backpack , Hamilton Titanium Field Watch.
Outerwear: Barbour Classic Jacket
Favorite cologne: Chanel Platinum Egoiste
Favorite app: Umi Kitchen
Favorite piece of technology: iPhone
Next style/gear purchase: New MacBook Pro

Former Former Digital Trends Contributor, The Manual

Fashion & Style

The Internet Killed Expertise and Then Made It Cool Again

How the Internet Killed Expertise, Made It Worthless, and Then Made It Cool Again

Watchmaker's workshop. Mechanical watch repair.

We’ve gone through a little period that I like to call the “Dark Ages of Knowing Things,” when the internet had an entire generation of men convinced they no longer needed experts. Why would they? Everything was available at the drop of a hat, and with one Google search, you could have the world at your fingertips. There were deep-dive forum threads written by a retired Swiss watchmaker in Neuchâtel who had seen 40 years of studying the serif on a Rolex dial (probably, but I can’t actually verify that.) It was all there, free for the taking, and unfortunately, completely indistinguishable from a guy who just bought his first watch 6 weeks beforehand and was already writing a buying guide.

For a while at least, it felt like the walls were coming down, and in some ways, they were. The gatekeepers no longer had their gates, which meant that a kid from Doncaster could learn to identify a fake Submariner faster than a back-alley dealer who had been in the business for 20 years if he simply spent enough nights casually perusing Reddit threads. Knowledge, we were told, should be free. Of course, nobody mentioned that free knowledge and good knowledge are not the same thing.

Fashion & Style

The Best Men’s Style Picks for FIFA World Cup 2026: What to Wear from Takeoff to Kickoff

Style, shirt

FIFA 2026 provides a global amphitheater for sport, people, and culture to converge. Not only do the world’s best football players compete for the crown, but devoted fans have opportunities for travel and spectacle, visiting new places while cheering on their national team. It’s a true celebration.

And when participating in a once-in-a-lifetime event, it makes sense to dress your best, not only to look good, but to express yourself and support your team. With that in mind, I put together my favorites for each step of the World Cup journey — travel day, match day, and nights on the town.

Fashion & Style

Christopher Nolan and Hamilton made a bronze watch fit for The Odyssey

Hamilton and Christopher Nolan team up again, with a bronze field watch for timed for the debut of The Odyssey.

Wristwatch, Arm, Body Part

Here's a first for a company that's spent decades sticking its watches into movies: this one was built for a film it can never actually appear in. That's the twist on the Khaki Field Auto The Odyssey Limited Edition, Hamilton's latest team-up with Christopher Nolan tied to his upcoming epic The Odyssey (in theaters July 17).

Since the film is set in the Bronze Age, it's pretty unlikely that anybody was wearing a wristwatch. For us in the modern age, though, the new watch's 42mm case is bronze (it'll develop its own patina over time). The black dial looks like Odysseus's helmet; there are a pair of sword-shaped hands in bronze, and the 12 o'clock index is modeled on a rivet from the scabbard. You get the idea. Meanwhile, the titanium case back is engraved with the helmet and Nolan's signature.