"Just be wild." Come to the restaurant dressed as you wish. Order, drink what you want, and even eat with your fingers if that pleases you." This is the motto of chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, and the explanation behind the name of their first restaurant venture. They've been a team for more than a decade, and have cooked in Florida and at other restaurants in L.A., catered, and traveled the world discovering other cuisines.

It began with two “food dudes”. Laid-back, long-haired cooks who grew up in Florida and are culinary graduates of the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale who made their way to California and ended up at the late Chadwick in Beverly Hills working with Ben Ford and Govind Armstrong. In 2004, the dudes, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, found Carmelized Productions, a catering company. Soon, they’re starring in the Food Network docudrama series, “Two Dudes Catering,” which purports to show “two young renegade chefs who play by their own rules” in “the big time world of Hollywood catering.” That Spring, they opened Into the Wild. A restaurant on Fairfax Avenue that picks up on the idea of Nigel Ferguson’s London restaurant St. John and focuses on rustic meat-centric cooking.