Answering All 24 Questions from My Ashland News Interview with Jim Flint

A few weeks ago, I received a message from Jim Flint a newspaper publisher and editor who has been writing about this community for a long time, asking if he'd be able to talk with me about Zi Spice and check in how the year was going. I said yes without hesitation, and then spent the next few days quietly nervous about it. Jim's piece, "Zi Spice Takes Root in Ashland, Blending Global Flavors with a Personal Story," ran in the Ashland News, and I am genuinely moved by the care and generosity he brought to telling it.

To see this place, this thing I built reflected back through someone else's eyes was a strange and humbling experience. It reminded me that Zi Spice is no longer just mine. It belongs, in some real way, to this community now. After the piece ran, a number of you reached out asking for more, more context, more story, more of the conversation behind the conversation. So here, in full, are the questions Jim sent me and the answers I sat with and wrote out honestly. Some of it is personal.

Some of it is probably more than you asked for. But that's how I cook and apparently how I write, I don't really know how to do anything halfway.

Mimosa Sunday

You’ve described food as a way of connecting to heritage and community. What are your earliest memories of that connection growing up?

My earliest memories of food are of my grandfather making peanut brittle and home-brewed beer in his kitchen, and my grandmother sitting on the floor, tossing daal into the air with her basket, sorting the bad ones from the good. That same grandmother used to make me breakfast before school every morning, and before she served it she would go out to our budgie cage, a 12 by 12 foot space surrounded by trees, because we had so many of them, and pull one out for me to enjoy its company while I ate.

My other grandmother, on the opposite side of the world, in Saskatchewan, taught me how to roll roti with just one hand, without ever lifting the roll and cut onions into the thinnest slices, quickly and efficiently. In Toronto, my third grandmother, taught me how to beat gold leaf with enough delicacy that it wouldn't break, to place onto Indian sweets called Barfi, that we served next to dishes like Tahdig and Ghormeh Sabzi. So many completely different worlds, with completely different food traditions.

After that I grew up everywhere. Kentucky, Texas, Seattle, Oahu, San Francisco, the Massachusetts coast, Portland, Southern Oregon, Saskatoon, Toronto, Lahore and Karachi, and probably some spots I missing. I moved constantly and food was never about one tradition for me. It was about arriving somewhere new and figuring out where you belonged, and the fastest way to do that was always through what people were eating. Every place I lived had its own language of spice, its own rhythm in the kitchen, its own way of gathering around a table. I absorbed all of it. A Texas barbecue pit and a Lahore spice market and an Oahu fish market and a San Francisco farmers market are all in me. I didn't know it at the time, but I was building a palate that would eventually become Zi Spice, globally curious, rooted in ancient traditions, and completely impossible to put in one box.

Your family background spans multiple cultures and cuisines; how did that shape your palate and curiosity about spices?

My family background is genuinely difficult to put into a single sentence, which is probably the most honest answer to this question. I have roots that stretch across continents and cultures, and the table at home was never just one thing. It was everything, depending on which grandmother was cooking, which country we were living in, which market my father had passed through that day.

I remember being on the back of my dad's moped in Karachi, rolling through the open air market looking for dinner, passing pile after pile of spices. Turmeric mountains. Towers of dried chilis. Sacks of cardamom and coriander and cumin that perfumed the entire street. I was a child and I didn't have the language for what I was experiencing, but my body understood it completely. That smell, that color, that abundance. It went straight into my memory and never left.

That's what spices are for me. They aren't ingredients. They're a sensory archive of every place I've ever loved. When I bloom cardamom in butter at Zi Spice, I am back on that moped. When someone tastes our Golden Chai for the first time and their eyes close for just a second, I know they've found their own version of that memory. That's what I'm cooking toward, every single day.

Fried Chicken, with Tamarind, Hot Honey Cultured Cream and Mango Compote.

Was there a moment when you realized food would be more than just an interest, that it might become your life’s work?

Honestly? I'm not sure I would call it my life's work. That phrase feels too small and too final for what food actually is to me. I do this because I love it. Because it connects me to every place I've ever lived, every person who fed me, every market I've walked through. But my life is enormous. I've lived on multiple continents, raised children, built things from nothing in places where I knew no one. Food is one expression of that life, maybe the most visible one right now. But I'd be lying if I said I woke up one day and decided this was my destiny. I woke up and decided I wanted to make something beautiful and nourishing and honest, and this is where that impulse landed. For now. Ask me again in ten years.  

You started working in the food industry at 14. What did those early jobs teach you that still informs your approach today?

I started working in food at 14, rolling burritos. It wasn't glamorous. Nobody was watching. Nobody was grading me. But I learned something at that age that has never left me, if you're not going to do it well, there is no point in doing it at all. Pride in your work isn't about recognition. It's about the standard you hold yourself to when no one is looking. A perfectly rolled burrito at 14 and a perfectly plated saffron labneh bowl at Zi Spice come from exactly the same place. The ingredient changes. The intention doesn't. I think that's the most important thing the food industry taught me early, that the person eating what you made deserves your full effort, every single time, whether they notice or not.  

Who were your earliest mentors in the kitchen or in business, and what did you take from them?

My earliest mentors were my family. Put my family in a kitchen and something completely different happens. The care that doesn't come out in words comes out in food.

I think about making khowsuey. It's a Burmese noodle dish but my family made it their own, and it doesn't come together with just one or two ingredients. There are twenty, maybe more. The paar. The fried chili. The chutneys. The green onions. The lemons. Each one matters. Each one has to be right. And the process started before anyone turned on a stove. It started at the store, together, picking out every single component, talking about each one, arguing about which chili, which lemon, how much. That trip to the store was love. The sorting and the chopping and the assembling was love. The bowl placed in front of you without a word was love.

I learned from people who expressed everything they couldn't say out loud through what they put on a table. That's still what I'm doing at Zi Spice. Every dish is something I couldn't find another way to say.

You’ve called your culinary education “deeply experiential.” What were some of the most formative places or experiences along that path?

I've eaten and worked in some remarkable places. Pecan in Oakland, which introduced me to a kind of Southern cooking I hadn't experienced outside the South itself. Luella and the juxtaposition of working at the Saloon, both in San Francisco, where the food felt alive and unexpected. These were formative experiences, places that showed me what a kitchen and bar with a real point of view looks like.

But the best food I have ever eaten was a meatloaf. At the Casino in Bodega, made by a chef named Mark Maliki. I am almost embarrassed to say that. All those restaurants, all those countries, all those markets and spice piles and grandmother's kitchens, and the dish that stopped me completely was a meatloaf in Northern California. I cried. I didn't expect to and I couldn't entirely explain it. It filled a space in my heart I didn't know was empty.

That's what great cooking does. It doesn't have to be complicated or exotic or expensive. It just has to be true. That's what I learned. That's what I cook toward.

Avocado Toast, Gluten Free, with Farm Fresh Fried Egg

Your work blends intuition with an understanding of science; flavor, fermentation, chemistry. How do those two sides of your process interact?

  I couldn't tell you the chemistry behind what I do. I didn't study food science. I don't think about fermentation in terms of compounds or pH levels. But I know when something is right. I know it before I taste it, sometimes just from the smell, or the color, or the way a sauce moves in the pan. That knowing came from somewhere, from years of watching, tasting, absorbing, moving through kitchens and markets on multiple continents. I think what people call intuition in cooking is really just experience that has moved so deep into your body that you've forgotten you learned it. My grandmother didn't know the science of why blooming spices in fat releases more flavor. She just knew to do it. I am the same. The science is there, working underneath everything I make. I just don't need to name it to use it.  

Spices are at the center of everything you do. What drew you specifically to spices as a creative and cultural language?

I don't think spices chose me so much as I never had a choice. When you grow up the way I did, moving constantly between cultures and continents, you don't have a hometown. You don't have a single food memory that anchors you to one place. What you have instead are spices. Because spices travel. They have always traveled. They were the reason trade routes existed, the reason people crossed oceans, the reason cultures collided and blended and became something new. Spices are the original global language and I grew up speaking all of them.  

You often talk about balance; flavor, texture, nourishment. How do you think about that balance when developing a dish?

Balance for me starts with a question: what does this dish need to feel complete? Not impressive. Not complex. Complete. There is a difference.

Take the lamb pilaf. You have the richness of the meat, the fragrance of saffron rice, the brightness of tamarind, the sweetness of pickled raisins, the sharpness of pickled onion, the green freshness of fennel oil. Each element is doing a specific job. The acid cuts the fat. The sweetness softens the heat. The fresh herbs lift everything so it doesn't sit heavy. None of those decisions came from a recipe. They came from tasting, adjusting, asking what is missing, what is too loud, what needs to step back.

I think about texture the same way I think about a conversation. If everyone is talking at the same volume nothing lands. You need something crisp against something soft. Something warm against something cool. Something that surprises you in the middle of a bite you thought you already understood.

And nourishment is the part most people forget. I always ask, will this make someone feel good after they eat it? Not just during. The spices I use, the organic ingredients, the care in sourcing, that's not marketing. That's me asking whether this food is actually good for the person I'm serving. That question is always part of the balance.

Fresh Eggs from our Farm

How much of your menu comes from tradition and how much from experimentation or invention? 

I don't really work a dish. I think about what something should taste like, I make it, and somehow it's just there. I can't fully take credit for that. I think it's less about talent and more about a lifetime of paying attention. Of watching, tasting, absorbing, being present in kitchens and markets and at tables where extraordinary things were happening.

Someone once described creativity as not making something from nothing, but clearing enough space for something to come through you. That resonates with me. I don't feel like I invent dishes. I feel like I get quiet enough to hear what wants to exist. The practice makes the listening easier. But the dish isn't really mine. It comes from everywhere I've been and everyone who ever fed me. I'm just the one standing at the stove.

What was the original idea behind Zi Spice as an artisanal food company, and how did it evolve in its early stages?

There was no grand business plan. No pivot point, no investor deck, no carefully mapped evolution. I decided I wanted to make chocolates and sell them at the farmers market, so I did. I made chocolates. People loved them. And then one day I saw that the old Hither building on East Main Street was available and something in me just said, yes. That's the space. So I took it and started a restaurant.

I think people expect a more dramatic origin story. A lifelong dream, a moment of clarity, years of planning. Mine is simpler than that. I saw an opportunity that felt right and I moved toward it. The same instinct that tells me a dish is ready before I taste it told me that space was mine before I signed the lease. I have learned to trust that voice. It hasn't steered me wrong yet.

Your products; spices, teas, confections; reflect both local sourcing and global influence. How did you develop that identity?

I'm not sure I set out to have an identity. I'm not sure anyone does, not really. I think identity is just what happens when you make enough honest decisions in a row and people start to see the pattern before you do.

Someone pointed out to me once that everything at Zi Spice is both deeply local and deeply global at the same time. The chocolate is made with ingredients grown down the road in the Applegate Valley and finished with techniques and flavors that come from the other side of the world. The chai is brewed with whole spices that have traveled centuries of trade routes and served to someone who drove twenty minutes from their farm outside Ashland. I didn't plan that. That's just who I am. I have always lived between worlds. I have never belonged entirely to one place. Zi Spice reflects that because everything I make reflects that.

So I suppose yes, that is my identity. I just didn't know it until someone asked.

The Oregon Chocolate Festival seemed like an important moment for your business. What did that experience mean for you?

The Oregon Chocolate Festival was a genuinely important moment for Zi Spice. It put us in front of a lot of people very quickly and the response to our chocolates was overwhelming. I gave a talk I was proud of, I connected with some incredible people in the chocolate and artisan food world, and it confirmed that what we were making had real resonance beyond our immediate community.

It also taught me a lot about what kind of business I wanted to build. There is something clarifying about being in a large, busy event environment. You learn very quickly what kind of interactions feed you and what kind drain you. I am most alive when I am having a real conversation with someone about food, about flavor, about where something comes from and why it matters. That is what led me toward the restaurant. Toward a space that is mine, where every interaction can be intentional and every dish can tell its own story. The festival pointed me in that direction and I'm grateful for it.

At what point did you start thinking about moving from products and classes into a full restaurant space?

 Honestly? Probably around the fiftieth time I took down my market tent. I was doing five farmers markets a week. Five setups, five breakdowns, hauling what amounted to about 500 pounds of equipment and product every single time. I got in tremendous shape. But I was exhausted in a way that felt unsustainable. There is a romanticism to the farmers market life that is real, the community, the direct connection with customers, the rhythm of outdoor selling, and I loved all of that. But at some point your body starts having a conversation with you about what is and isn't working and I started listening.

I wanted a home. A place where I could set something down and it would still be there the next morning. Where I could build something permanent instead of assembling and dismantling it five times a week. The restaurant was the answer to that. Four walls, a kitchen, a door that opens and closes on my terms. After years of markets and tents and hauling and setup, walking into that space on East Main Street felt like exhaling for the first time in years.

That said, I am genuinely excited to get back to markets this summer. Just a few carefully chosen ones. I have learned my lesson about doing all of them.

Opening the brick-and-mortar

Ceremonial Grade, Organic Matcha with Housemade Rose Syrup and Dark Chocolate

What were the biggest challenges in making the leap to a physical restaurant, especially leading up to your July 2025 opening?

The biggest challenge was the one nobody talks about openly. I was worried nobody would come. You can build the most beautiful space, source the most extraordinary ingredients, create a menu you believe in completely, and then stand behind a counter on opening day wondering if any of it matters to anyone but you. That vulnerability doesn't go away just because you've worked hard. If anything it gets louder the closer you get to opening.

I had done the markets. I had the chocolate business. I knew people responded to what I made. But a restaurant is different. A restaurant asks people to make a deliberate choice to come to you, to seek you out, to sit down and stay. That felt enormous. And then the parade came down East Main Street and stopped at our front steps on the Fourth of July and the decision was made for me. The room filled up before I was ready and I have been trying to keep up ever since.

That first day cured me of the worry. Not because it was easy after that, but because I saw that the food did what I hoped it would do. It brought people in and it made them stay.

The restaurant is entirely gluten-free and rooted in global spice traditions. How did you shape a menu that feels both distinctive and accessible?

I saw it was available and I knew immediately. Some decisions are like that. The space has everything. A beautiful outdoor patio, a covered deck, parking, close enough to downtown that people walk by but set back enough that it has its own atmosphere. It already had a good vibe before I touched it. My job was simply not to ruin that.

I think that's actually an underrated skill in hospitality, knowing what to leave alone. A lot of people take a space with good bones and overdesign it into something sterile. I wanted Zi Spice to feel like somewhere you exhale when you walk in. Somewhere that was already waiting for you. The space gave me that for free. I just added the food, the chai, the music, the people, and tried to stay out of the way of something that was already good.

First year in operation

Chai Flights!

Now that you’re approaching your first year, how would you describe how the restaurant is doing both in terms of business and personal fulfillment?

We're doing well. People are coming, the bills are being paid, the staff seems happy. For a first year that feels like a genuine win and I don't take any of it for granted.

Personal fulfillment is a interesting question because I think people expect a more dramatic answer. A sense of arrival, of having made it, of finally living the dream. What I actually feel is simpler than that. I'm happy. I'm doing something I enjoy every day. I'm making food that matters to people and I'm building something real in a community I care about. That feels like enough. That feels like more than enough.

I think we put a lot of pressure on work to be transcendent, to be the thing that completes us. I don't need Zi Spice to complete me. I just need it to be good and honest and worth showing up for every day. And it is. That's the whole answer.

What dishes or offerings have surprised you in terms of customer response or popularity? Describe some of your favorite dishes on the menu.

The thing that has surprised me most is the passion people have for the pistachio cardamom chocolate chip cookie and our sourdough bread loaves. Not surprised that people love them, I knew they were good. Surprised by the intensity of the response when we run out. People get genuinely upset. There is a loyalty there that I didn't anticipate, a possessiveness almost, like these things belong to them now and I have no right to be sold out.

That feeling, when something you make becomes something people can't imagine their week without, is extraordinary. You make a cookie. You make a loaf of bread. And somehow it becomes part of someone's routine, part of what makes their Tuesday okay. I find that deeply moving and also mildly terrifying because now I can never stop making them.

My favorite dishes are the ones that surprise people. The Turkish eggs, soft poached on cool mint labneh with Aleppo spiced brown butter, because nobody expects that combination and then they taste it and they go very quiet in the best possible way. The lamb pilaf because it is everything I love about cooking, layered, fragrant, generous. And the French toast, because it sounds simple and then it arrives and it is anything but.

What have you learned about running a restaurant, staffing, hours, day-to-day realities, that you couldn’t have anticipated before opening?

 It's really, really hard work. I knew that intellectually before I opened. I had done the markets, I had run a product business, I understood what physical and operational demands looked like. And then I opened a restaurant and realized I had understood nothing.

The staffing alone is a world unto itself. Finding people who care as much as you do, who show up, who treat the food and the customers with the same respect you would, is genuinely one of the hardest problems in this industry. The hours are relentless. The physical demands are real. There is no day off in your head even when you are not in the building.

And yet. I show up every day. I have not once woken up and not wanted to go in. That feels significant to me. The work is hard but it is my work, built by my hands, expressing something true about who I am. I think that is the only way anyone survives the first year of a restaurant. Not by underestimating the difficulty but by loving the thing enough that the difficulty becomes just part of the deal.

Happy Hour Cocktails

You’ve hinted at expanding hours and possibly evening service, what does the next phase of Zi Spice look like?

We already took that step. Thursday through Saturday we are now open until 8pm and the evening service has been a really exciting addition to what Zi Spice is. The restaurant feels different at night. The energy shifts, the cocktail program comes alive, the live music on weekends takes on a different quality when the sun goes down. It is the same food and the same space but it becomes something else entirely after dark.

The next phase is about deepening what we have already built. Getting the staffing right so I am not carrying everything myself. Getting back to a few carefully chosen farmers markets this summer. Continuing to grow the catering and events side of the business. Possibly expanding the chocolate program. And honestly, just getting better at every single thing we already do. I am not chasing scale. I am chasing quality. If Zi Spice in its second year is simply a more refined, more consistent, more deeply realized version of what it is today, that feels like exactly the right kind of growth.

How do you think about growth while maintaining the care and intentionality that seems central to your work?

Growth is only interesting to me if it doesn't cost me the thing that makes Zi Spice worth coming to. And that thing is authentic connection. The moment someone sits down and genuinely experiences the food, not just eats it but actually tastes it and feels something, that is what I am here for. That is the whole point.

The risk of growth is that you can optimize your way right out of that. You hire more people, you serve more covers, you streamline the kitchen, and somewhere in all that efficiency the soul of the thing quietly leaves the building. I have seen it happen to places I loved. I have no interest in doing that to Zi Spice.

So I think about growth slowly and carefully. I ask whether each new thing I add, each new hour, each new hire, each new event, brings more of those authentic moments or dilutes them. If it dilutes them I don't do it. The people who come to Zi Spice and actually love the food, who come back, who bring their friends, who get upset when we are out of the cookie, those are the people I am cooking for. I will not trade them for volume. Not ever.

What continues to challenge you, and what continues to excite you, about this work right now?

The challenge right now is the most exciting kind. It is the challenge of figuring out what Zi Spice wants to become next. We have proven the concept. People come, they love the food, they come back. Now the question is how do we deepen that. How do we make the evening service everything it could be. How do we build the market in the parking lot into a real community gathering. How do we grow the chocolate program. These are good problems. The kind of problems you only get to have if you survived the first year, and we did.

What excites me is the moment someone tastes something for the first time and goes quiet. That pause before they say anything. It happened yesterday and it will happen tomorrow and it never gets old. Not once. I am also genuinely excited about the community that is forming around this place. People are finding each other here. That is more than I ever expected and honestly more than I ever planned for. The food brought them in. But something larger is keeping them. That is what gets me up in the morning.

The Lamb and Cheddar Sandwich

If you think back to your younger self, rolling burritos at 14, what would surprise her most about where you are today?

I don't think she would be surprised. I have never lived my life with expectations. I didn't have a plan at 14 and I don't have one now, not in the way people mean when they talk about plans. I have instincts and I follow them. I have curiosity and I feed it. I have love for food and people and I show up and express that every day.

What I would tell her is what I try to remember now. That every day is a joy. Not every day is easy. Not every day goes the way you hoped. But there is something joyful available in every single one of them if you are paying attention. A customer who tastes something and closes their eyes for just a second. A staff member who gets something right for the first time. A morning when the bread comes out perfect and the kitchen smells like everything is exactly as it should be.

She was rolling burritos at 14 because she loved the work. I am making saffron labneh and handcrafted chocolates and house brewed chai in downtown Ashland for the same reason. The ingredient changed. The love didn't.

If you've read this far, thank you. Truly. Writing this out was its own kind of practice, the same kind of paying attention I try to bring to the kitchen, turned inward for a change. I am grateful to Jim Flint for asking questions worth answering, and I am grateful to every single person who has walked through our door on East Main Street, ordered the Turkish eggs or the lamb pilaf or the cookie we always seem to run out of too soon, and made this place what it is becoming. You are the reason any of this means anything. Come find us. The chai is on.