Under the spell of spice. A new seasoning experience born from a home cook’s spark

A single plate’s aroma can change a life. How Inspice came to be.

“Nobody knows this scent yet.”

An intuition that rose one day out of nowhere — that was the beginning of the brand called Inspice.
Until that moment came, Sho Nishimura, founder of Inspice and its scent-and-flavour designer, had lived in a world with no connection to spices or to professional cooking.

But there were nights around a pot at a campsite. Home-cooked food set out at a party.
He loved, without reserve, the time that arrives now and then in ordinary life: sitting at a table with someone.

“If I am going to cook at all, let it be a plate that stays in the memory.”

From that wish came a search for a spoonful of surprise in the cooking, and the first contact with spices and herbs.
The fruit-like sweetness that opens up behind a chilli. The note like tree bark that comes after pepper.
Layer aromas, and a dish becomes a landscape. That is something that speaks to the senses rather than to chemistry.

Before long, composing scent became a daily routine, giving rise to a private experience of taste that words cannot hold.

And then, one day, a thought.
“If there is a scent in this world that nobody knows yet, I want to deliver it.”

That is not the pursuit of taste alone; it is a proposal for a life with aroma in it.
Not artificial additives, not an excess of salt, but 100% plant-derived, and natural.
And, with that, a spice food whose scent carries deep into the heart and loosens the five senses of whoever uses it.

Inspice began, quietly, that way.

Continues >> Part two: Not just a seasoning. The secret of the aromatic table Inspice builds in Kanazawa

Part three: Aroma loosens the heart. A spice hideout in a back lane of the Higashi Chaya District