Lifestyle
Where Do Your Spices Come From?
In 2012, Ethan Frisch was working for a development organization in Afghanistan when he saw a vendor selling wild cumin at a local market.
“I thought I knew my way around spices,” said Mr. Frisch, 38, recalling his experience at the market in Badakhshan Province. “But I had never tasted anything like this.”
Mr. Frisch had worked as a cook in London, where he attended graduate school for international development, and in New York, including time at Tabla, the fine-dining Indian restaurant by the chef Floyd Cardoz and the restaurateur Danny Meyer. He started bringing bags of cumin home to New York to share with friends in the restaurant industry, garnering rave reviews with each taste. He realized that there was a market for spices sourced directly from farmers.
In 2016, he started Burlap & Barrel, a single-origin spice company, with his friend Ori Zohar. The two had collaborated years earlier on Guerrilla Ice Cream, a roving ice cream cart that served flavors inspired by political and activist movements. Mr. Zohar came from a business background, working in marketing and advertising, and helped found a tech start-up that shut down in 2017.
Mr. Frisch put his life savings — about $20,000 — into starting the business. He ran it out of his one-bedroom apartment in Queens, cold-calling restaurants and showing up to kitchens with a backpack full of spices to give chefs a taste. He built up a base of spice suppliers, using skills and connections he developed while working with the Aga Khan Foundation on rural infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, and doing logistics for Doctors Without Borders in Jordan.
For years, Mr. Frisch and Mr. Zohar flew overseas to stock up on inventory, returning with duffel bags full of cardamom, cumin, nutmeg and more. They would bring back enough spices to “fund the cost of the trip,” Mr. Frisch said. (“I had some funny conversations with the customs officers,” he added.)
In 2019, Burlap & Barrel embarked on its first chef collaboration: a line of masala spice blends with Mr. Cardoz.
After Mr. Cardoz died from Covid-19 in March 2020, his wife, Barkha Cardoz, continued to work with Burlap & Barrel, releasing the blends in October 2020, in honor of what would have been Mr. Cardoz’s 60th birthday. The company received more than a thousand orders that day — its biggest day of sales at that time.
The founders realized that there was “a way to connect a home-cook audience to a chef, through a spice blend,” Mr. Frisch said, and collaborations became a core part of their business. Amid the early months of the pandemic, Mr. Frisch and Mr. Zohar saw an increase in orders as more people made their meals at home.
In April 2023, another breakthrough moment came when they appeared on the reality TV show “Shark Tank.”
“It almost doesn’t even taste like conventional cinnamon — I mean, it’s, like, incomparable,” Gwyneth Paltrow, a guest “Shark,” said after trying the brand’s Royal Cinnamon variety from Vietnam.
Mr. Frisch and Mr. Zohar didn’t end up with a deal, but they gained publicity and a surge of new customers. In 2024, the company did about $9 million in sales, according to Mr. Frisch.
Over the years, they have collaborated with chefs including Marc Murphy; Ashleigh Shanti; Sohla and Ham El-Waylly, who are New York Times contributors; and the fashion designer and cookbook author Peter Som. Recently, they teamed up with Martha Stewart on a poultry seasoning, and with Jane Goodall on jars of honey from the Miombo woodlands of Tanzania.
Now, more than eight years later, what began as a scrappy passion project is a growing brand and social enterprise with big-name collaborations, home-cook devotees, celebrity fans and cameos in the background of the FX show “The Bear.”
The chefs Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate, founders of Honeysuckle Provisions, an Afrocentric grocery and cafe in West Philadelphia that was named one of Eater’s best new restaurants of 2023, collaborated with Burlap & Barrel. They wanted to work with them, Mr. Tate said, both because of the sheer flavor of the spices, and because of their ethical and intentional approach to working with farmers.
“They make sure that the communities that they are sourcing from are respected — not just through the ingredients that are being extracted and that they’re exporting to make these profits, but they’re also redistributing that wealth to the community,” Mr. Tate said.
At Hani’s Bakery and Cafe in Lower Manhattan — a new spot from Miro Uskokovic, the former Gramercy Tavern pastry chef, and his wife, Shilpa Uskokovic, an editor at Bon Appétit — Burlap & Barrel’s Royal Cinnamon is used in their popular malted cinnamon buns.
The cinnamon “is the only one we’ve found that offers the right combination of strength and florality to stand up to all that cream cheese and butter,” Mr. Uskokovic wrote in an email.
“As a chef, the one thing that we have always lacked is any kind of traceability or any kind of transparency in spices, in herbs,” said Rick Bayless, the celebrated Chicago chef and restaurateur who specializes in Mexican cuisine. “When I found Burlap & Barrel, I wanted to get to know these guys and see what they were doing, because they were telling stories about who grew this cumin and who grew these peppercorns.”
Transparency and storytelling is at the heart of the business. As what’s known as a public benefit corporation — a for-profit company that focuses on contributing to a social good — Burlap & Barrel seeks “to connect smallholder farmers to high-value markets,” said Mr. Zohar, 39.
“Our business works because we’re paying the farmers more, which then allows the farmers to not just grow the spices, but they clean the spices, they dry the spices, they grind the spices, they prepare them for export,” he said.
The company now consists of 20 people, most of whom are contractors, and works with farmers in about 30 countries including Vietnam, Turkey and Guatemala, often helping with the logistics of the export process. The founders visit farms to meet the farmers and see firsthand the practices and products of each potential partner.
Shadel Nyack Compton, the owner and managing director of Belmont Estate, a family farm and tourist destination in Grenada, works with Burlap & Barrel to sell nutmeg and bay leaves. The farm — whose main crop is cocoa — has been in her family for 80 years.
In 2021, Ms. Nyack Compton found Burlap & Barrel online. She was looking for new business and wanted to work with a company that was interested in developing a relationship with farmers. “We want our story to be told,” she said.
“Spices represent a lot to a lot of different people,” Mr. Frisch said. “A spice jar becomes a way to tell a story, to evoke a memory, to teach about a culture or a cuisine, to give someone the opportunity to do their own cooking in a different way.”
Burlap & Barrel is unique, Ms. Nyack Compton said, because the company works to “establish this kind of equitable, transparent supply chain,” an approach she said is more often seen in the cocoa and chocolate space. With spices, she said, “it’s very novel.”
Oksana Masters and Aaron Pike at the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics. They bonded at a Para Nordic competition in 2013 over their love of coffee.
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Michael Steele/Getty Images
Want more Olympics updates? Subscribe here to get our newsletter, Rachel Goes to the Games, delivered to your inbox for a behind-the-scenes look at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
MILAN — Hundreds of incredible athletes are taking part in these Winter Games. And a number of them just happen to be dating — or engaged or married to — each other.
Some participate in the same sports, as teammates or even opponents, while others come from different athletic backgrounds.
Take U.S. Paralympians Oksana Masters and Aaron Pike, who both compete in several summer and winter sports. They first met at a Para Nordic competition in 2013, where they bonded over their love of coffee, before connecting on a deeper level at the 2014 Sochi Games.
“We had a really special moment where we kind of realized on a gondola that this is more than just a friend — like a hug that spoke a thousand words kind of thing,” Masters told NPR in October. “[I] realized, ‘Oh my gosh, this is not just something like a small attraction here.’”
Fast forward to 2022, and Pike proposed to Masters on a gondola in Wyoming. Masters has very publicly gone dress shopping — even bringing her two Paris 2024 gold medals with her — but they haven’t announced a wedding date yet. They said they were considering getting married after the Paralympics in Italy, while their families are already gathered together.
“In Italy would be a perfect way for our forever journey [to] start together, because of skiing in the mountains,” Masters said. “But, then, you need to ask him, too — more — because he’s doing nothing for the planning at all.”
NPR did ask Pike.
“I made a joke one time like: I proposed, now it’s your turn,” he said with a laugh. “And she will not let that go.”
Below are some of the Team USA winter power-couples to know, plus a few honorable mentions.
Hilary Knight and Brittany Bowe
At the socially-distanced Beijing Games in 2022, Hilary Knight asked Brittany Bowe if she wanted to go for a walk.
“That became our routine,” said Bowe. “We’d walk the Village after dinner and just talk. It was cool living in a bubble and not having outside distractions.”
Now they’re sharing another Olympics together.
It’s the fifth for Knight, the women’s hockey captain and all-time leading scorer for Team USA, and the fourth for Bowe, a two-time medalist in long-track speed skating. And this time, they’re not isolated in a bubble.
“It’s always nice to be able to support Hilary, and when we can see each other’s events,” Bowe said after attending Knight’s first match. “Her family was there, my whole family was there. It just brings additional energy to the atmosphere.”
Kaysha Love and Hunter Powell
Bobsledders Kaysha Love and Hunter Powell celebrate after Love won a race in Lake Placid, N.Y., in March 2025. The couple is now engaged.
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Al Bello/Getty Images
Bobsled athletes Kaysha Love and Hunter Powell met when they were track and field stars at their respective colleges. Love switched to bobsled and made the 2022 Olympics, then urged Powell to do the same.
“She convinced me to go to #SlideToGlory [a USA recruitment event,] which I was very resistant to, but she talked me into it, and I’m so thankful that she did,” Powell said from Cortina.
They got engaged in July 2025. Now, they’re Olympic teammates.
“It’s the coolest thing in the world,” Powell added. “I’m travelling the world for the first time in my life, chasing the dream, with the woman I love and my best friend. It doesn’t get cooler than that.”
Red Gerard and Hailey Langland
Snowboarders Red Gerard and Hailey Langland at an event in 2023 at Park City, Utah.
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Snowboarders Red Gerard and Hailey Langland have known each other since they were 12, and have been in a relationship for the past eight years.
They both competed at the Olympics in Pyeongchang in 2018 — where Gerard won gold — and 2022 in Beijing. He is competing again this year. She’s sidelined by an ACL injury, but staying with him and his parents in Italy.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates
Evan Bates took Madison Chock on a date on her 16th birthday, though it didn’t immediately lead to anything.
Several years later, in 2011, they partnered up in ice dance. Six years later, Bates confessed his feelings.
“Well, I pretty much told Maddie that I loved her,” Bates told NBC in 2018. “Last year I told (her) how I really felt and that changed things a lot.”
The two got engaged in 2022 and married in the summer of 2024 in Hawaii, where Chock’s parents are from. Bates told NPR in October that while “the skating career is short and finite, the relationship is much, much longer.”
“We love what we do, but we also really love each other,” Chock added. “And we’re able to take this passion and use it to foster our connection as a couple. And I think from that we’ve grown a lot through our sport, and that’s been such a great teacher for us.”
They’re not the only ice dance power couple on Team USA: Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik have been partners on and off the ice since 2022.
Other couples to know
Marie-Philip Poulin, right, and Laura Stacey of Team Canada celebrate after winning the hockey gold medal match against Team United States.
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- Hockey greats Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey play together for the Montreal Victoire, and for Team Canada (of which Poulin is the captain). They’ve been together since 2017 and married since 2024.
- Kim Meylemans and Nicole Silveira are both skeleton racers, representing opposing teams (Belgium and Brazil). They’re also newlyweds, having married less than a year ago after sparking up a relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Anna Kjellbin and Ronja Savolainen met while playing together in the Swedish pro women’s hockey league, before getting signed to separate teams in Canada. The now-fiances are playing for separate teams at the Olympics, too: Sweden and Finland.
- There are three married couples in this year’s 10-team mixed doubles curling field:
- Italian ice dancers Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri have been together since 2009, with the on-ice PDA to prove it.
- Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant of Canada, Switzerland’s Yannick Schwaller and Briar Schwaller-Hürlimann, and Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten of Norway.
The way Sheila E. remembers it, she received her first call about a gig as a working Los Angeles musician as she was busy unpacking the moving truck with which she’d just moved to L.A.
“‘Can you come do a session?’ — that type of thing,” the Oakland native recalls with a laugh. “It was pretty awesome.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
This was 1980 or ’81, she reckons, just after she’d come off the road playing percussion for the jazz star George Duke; by 1984, she’d become a star herself with the pop hit “The Glamorous Life,” which she cut with her mentor Prince and which went to No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Over the decades that followed, Sheila E. went on to record or perform with everyone from Ringo Starr to Beyoncé. Yet her latest projects look back to her earliest days playing Latin jazz with her father, fellow percussionist Pete Escovedo: “Bailar” is a salsa album with guest vocal spots by the likes of Rubén Blades and Gloria Estefan, while an accompanying instrumental disc features appearances by players such as bassist Marcus Miller and trumpeter Chris Botti.
Sheila E. will tour Europe in April. Here, she runs down her routine for a welcome day off at home in L.A.
10 a.m.: Parents in the pews
I would get up around 7:30 or 8, and the first thing I’ll do is go to church. My church is called Believe L.A., and it’s in Calabasas. My pastor is Aaron Lindsey, who’s an incredible gospel producer who’s won many Grammys. The band is always on point, and it feeds my soul — it’s what I need as part of my food. You just walk out so happy. I mean, I walk in happy most of the time. But you walk out filled with love and peace. It’s a joyful time, especially when I get to bring my parents with me. Still having them around is a huge blessing. They just celebrated their 69th anniversary. That’s really rare.
Noon: No juice required
After church we’ll go to brunch at Leo & Lily in Woodland Hills. Sometimes I’ll order the breakfast, which is two eggs and turkey bacon and potatoes. But sometimes that’s a little bit too heavy, so I’ll get the orzo salad, which is really good. I might have an espresso, or I might have a glass of Champagne. I don’t like mimosas — just give it to me straight.
1:30 p.m.: Retail therapy
My parents love driving down Ventura Boulevard. We’ll stop at some places and go window shopping, or maybe we’ll go to the Topanga Westfield mall. And when we finish at the mall, I have to go to Costco. The Costco run is really just for my dog — I have to get all her food. I get turkey and vegetables, and I cook all that and pre-make her meals for two weeks so I don’t have to deal with it. I can just open it, warm it up and feed her. She’s a mixed pit rescue, and her name is Emma. I got her when she was 5 months old in Oakland while we were performing, and now she’s 12. She’s a sweetheart.
4 p.m.: Family secret
We’re sports fans, so if it’s football season, we have to hurry up and get back to my house for the game. We’re a 49ers family. I would say the Raiders because we’re from Oakland, but we’ve always been 49ers fans. I mean, when it’s time to root for the Raiders, we do. We don’t hate like the Raiders hate on us. I’ll cook food depending on who all’s coming over — my nephews and various friends and so on. I grill a lot, so I’ll do steaks or lamb chops or chicken wings. My mom loves making potato salad. I can’t tell you the recipe — it’s a secret. It’s actually her mother’s potato salad, and they’re Creoles. Those Creoles don’t mess around with their potato salad.
8:30 p.m.: Games after the game
I never tell anyone to leave. Sometimes people spend the night — it’s an open house. If we’re not too tired, we’ll start playing board games or card games. Don’t get us started on poker.
11:30 p.m.: Steam time
Before bed I’ll get into the sauna just to relax and do a little sweating. Then I go take a shower with jazz or spa music playing. Sometimes I’ll do a little stretching before I get in the bed. I usually don’t read before I go to sleep. My go-to is HGTV — I set it for an hour and a half, and I’m out.
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