Spice Bridge

03/01/2025

Congratulations to Seatango Foods for taking over the Spice Bridge space! So good to keep it in the “family”! ❤️🥧🍰🥪🇦🇷

High five if you're coming out! 🙌 Today: Seatango in Tukwila! 🎉 Grand Opening Announcement! 🎉 Seatango is thrilled to announce the opening of our brand-new location in South Seattle! Seatango/Spice Bridge Food Hall🌟 **Discover a World of Flavors:** 🍽️ Authentic Argentinian Cuisine 🌮 Delicious Mexican Dishes 🥘 Exotic Congolese Delights 🗓️ Soft Opening: March 1st 📍 Address: 14200 Tukwila International Blvd, Building A, Suite 141, Tukwila, WA 98168 Come and enjoy a unique culinary experience where diverse cultures meet delicious food. We can't wait to welcome you!

01/30/2025

It is time to say goodbye.

Global to Local was created to advance health equity in South King County. However, its doors are closing due to rising operating costs and a lack of sustainable funding.

One program of Global to Local was the Food Innovation Network (FIN), which worked to enhance the local food system and increase access to healthy foods.

Food businesses have traditionally been a way for immigrants and low-income families to gain a foothold in the economy. Still, many South King County chefs face barriers to starting a business, including a lack of affordable commercial kitchen and restaurant space and challenges navigating unfamiliar systems.

In 2017, FIN launched our Food Business Incubator to help South King County BIPOC and immigrants start and grow food businesses. Through culturally sensitive business support, we assisted entrepreneurs with permits, subsidized kitchen and retail rent, helped make connections to market channels, and coached them on food industry standards.

In expanding its services, FIN built Spice Bridge, FIN’s Food Business Incubator, which operated from 2020-2024 and provided a home for FIN’s Incubator program. The 2,800-square-foot facility included a commercial kitchen with four cook stations, four retail food stalls, and a dining area. Food vendors rotated through the food hall stalls, offering culinary experiences that reflected the diversity of our community. Additional businesses used our kitchen for off-site sales, such as pop-ups and packaged products.

Spice Bridge also helped build food security in our community, supporting Tukwila Village Farmers Market, making fresh, local produce affordable and accessible, and providing a hub for FIN’s community meals program, which provided more than 8,700 no-cost meals for seniors and families in need.

We’re incredibly grateful to our generous community of donors and supporters who helped build and sustain Global to Local, the Food Innovation Network, and Spice Bridge.

Thank you for being a part of our work, our story, and our community.

01/09/2025

Meet Chef Caroline Musitu.

Caroline grew up in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo helping her mother cater weddings, parties, and church meetups. After fleeing armed conflict, Caroline moved to South King County to start a new life. Realizing no Congolese food businesses were in our region, she launched Taste of Congo to share her home country’s unique flavors with her new community.

A popular Congolese dish called Ntaba, which is grilled goat, is popular to eat after work in Congo. Chef Caroline serves Ntaba in traditional brown paper and with kwanga, which is boiled, fermented cassava. This dish is served with toothpicks to make it easy to share with others.

Beignets are deep-fried dough and called mikates in Congolese. Mikate vendors are found on street corners early in the morning in Congo so people can pick them up for breakfast on their way to work. Chef Caroline likes to eat them with peanut butter in the morning, afternoon, and evening.

Another popular dish in Congo is chicken stew cooked with onion, garlic, and tomato. In Congo, it’s called poulet a la moamba.

Chef Caroline dreams of opening her own Taste of Congo restaurant and packaging offerings like her chili sauce to ship them all over the United States.

Follow Chef Caroline and Taste of Congo or get in touch with her at [email protected] to taste the authentic flavors of Congo.

12/31/2024

Meet Chef Lilian Ryland.

Chef Lilian grew up in Nigeria and spent her holidays learning how to cook traditional, labor-intensive meals with her grandma.

When Lilian moved to Seattle, she learned many Americans had never had Nigerian food. She used her cooking wisdom to give more people the opportunity to easily taste the unique flavors of Nigerian food that usually takes many laborious hours to create.

Now available on her website and in PCC stores, Chef Lilian works to preserve her food heritage by offering simple and convenient meal kits for popular dishes full of authentic Nigerian flavors with her business, Naija Buka.

Check out Naija Buka’s meal kits and catering options at https://cheflilian.com/.

12/25/2024

Meet Chef Jolorene Guzman-Mohamad.

Jolorene grew up in Seattle, and her family was from the Philippines. Her family owned and operated a restaurant until Jolo reached five years old where Jolorene remembers running around pretending to be one of the chefs.

While cooking was a family tradition, Jolorene also taught herself to cook several styles of food. Jolo’s cooking is a blend of her early exposure to Filipino dishes, her husband’s Cambodian-Viet background, working in several Japanese restaurants, and a variety of cultural foods experienced while traveling, ultimately teaching herself to fuse those influences into her distinctive offerings today.

Jolorene started her catering business, Jolorene’s Kitchen, during the pandemic, when there was a high demand for sushi. Her other innovative menu items include Filipino sandwiches, and a twist on Bahn Mi with Filipino meat, sliders, and tacos.

Are you in the mood for new and different flavors? Jolorene’s Kitchen is the perfect choice. Get in touch with Jolorene to cater your next special event!

| [email protected] | (206) 565-8282

12/21/2024

Meet sister chefs Adama Jammeh and Oumie Sallah.

“Afella” means “tastes good” in the Sener language and “Jollof” is a local name for the people in Gambia, where the sisters were raised.

A dish rich in nutrients, “Jollof Rice” is one of their main dishes. Jollof rice is fried rice with a base made from vegetables and spices, including garlic, herbs, and ginger. Focusing on quality, health, and authenticity in their recipes, Adama and Oumie create everything down to the spices from scratch.

Other dishes include “Yassa” which is grilled chicken in an onion sauce. “Mafé” is a peanut butter stew with a base of slow-cooked onion and tomatoes and is one of the sisters’ most nutritious dishes. Chefs Adama and Oumie make Mafé with beef, chicken, or veggies. It can be eaten like a soup, but the sisters’ also serve it with rice.

Adama and Oumie were considered exceptional cooks by their community, who encouraged them to seek bigger opportunities. The sisters did just that when they settled in the Seattle area by founding Afella Jollof Catering. Since then, chefs Adama and Oumie have appeared at local farmers' markets and pop-ups and catered many local events. The sisters specialize in Senegambian cuisine—dishes from the West African countries of Senegal and Gambia, which have a shared culture and cuisine.

Chefs Adam and Oumie dream of expanding their business by packaging and selling their creations online and in stores. Let’s help them get there!

Get in touch with Adama and Oumie to cater your next event. https://afellajollof.square.site/

12/17/2024

Meet Chef DeCoda Reese of Coda’s Kitchen.

Coda’s Kitchen serves authentic Jamaican dishes with a Southern soul food influence.

Who’s in the mood for some classic macaroni and cheese?

Chef Reese experimented with many versions of the classic Mac & Cheese dish before locking her own version down which has been well received by many people. Some people love her version so much, they rely on it, “If I don’t bring this as a side for the holidays, my family slightly disowns me for the day.”

Chef Reese remembers the moment she discovered her love of making food. It was her seventh birthday, and after a long day of working, her mom made a cherry cheesecake. Though it was a simple dessert, it looked like the same cherry cheesecake on the box the ingredients came in. Chef Reese started cooking with her mom and grandmother as a child, and so loved the activity she would use her free time to play in the kitchen.

One of Chef Reese’s most popular dishes is Jerk Chicken/Oxtail, rice and peas, and cabbage. This meal takes two days to prepare because the ingredients are marinated overnight in a blend of fresh herbs, including cinnamon, allspice, clove, and ginger, scotch bonnet peppers, onions, and vegetables, to ensure the genuine Coda’s Kitchen flavor.

The next time you’re craving authentic Caribbean soul food, get in touch with Chef Reese! https://www.ckatl.com/

12/12/2024

Meet Chefs Zozan and Sheelan Shamdeen of Soozveen.

Soozveen translates to “the promise of love” in Kurdish.

Zozan and Sheelan are Kurdish-American sisters and avid cooks. They follow the “soozveen” philosophy when sharing their family recipes and the stories behind each dish. Their food is prepared with love and contains a history passed down through generations of women in their family. Even when exhausted, their grandmother, mother, and aunts cooked all the time, following family recipes from memory and cooking complicated dishes without measuring a thing. When Zozan and Sheelan’s mother got sick, the sisters started helping out in the kitchen. They enjoyed cooking so much, they often cooked too much! They brought their food with them to work at Highline College. The staff and teachers encouraged the sisters to start their own business. Dean Alice Madsen agreed with her staff and motivated Zozan and Sheelan with classes and support.

The Shamdeen sisters started the Mediterranean catering business in 2013 and enjoy serving groups with more than five people. Putting love into their food, Zozan and Sheelan are passionate about everything from flavors to presentation.

There are many Mediterranean/Iraqi restaurants, but Soozveen is one of only two Kurdish food businesses in King County. Zozan and Sheelan use spices from Northern Iraq, which are " the taste of the land!” Sharing food is part of Kurdish culture. “Even a very poor person will find a way to share food with a guest.” The sisters want to share their culture and the story behind each dish.

Are you craving dolmas and baklava? Great! Those are the sisters’ specialties.

https://spicebridge.org/catering/soozveen/

12/10/2024

Meet Chef Monica Di Bartolomeo.

Chef Monica and her husband, Chef Ariel Firpo, grew up in Argentina with ancestors from Italy and Spain. Chef Monica’s father was an Italian-Argentinian chef, and Chef Ariel’s mother and grandmother were both pastry chefs. Using many of the recipes and techniques they learned from their families and support from Ventures and the Food Innovation Network’s incubator, Chefs Monica and Ariel opened their Argentinian bakery in Lake City.

Craving buttery, flaky factura pastries?

Visit Chefs Monica and Ariel at their bakery at 12728 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, to satisfy your hankering! Along with authentic Argentinian sweets, Seatango offers traditional savory dishes made from scratch. Seatango foods are available at the bakery, but they also provide a substantial catering menu including savory appetizers, a variety of desserts, and grilled meats.

Picadas, mesa dulce, empanadas, asado, mate tea, coffee and more at Seatango!

11/22/2024

Meet Chef Nasrin Noori.

A combination of first letters from their middle names, Jazze’s is named after Nasrin’s four children. Jazze’s allows Nasrin to keep her children connected to their heritage through the food and hospitality celebrated in her culture.

Nasrin grew up in Afghanistan and immigrated to the U.S. with her family at age 11. Nasrin was always creative in the kitchen. As a child, she challenged herself to use whatever ingredients she had to craft delicious meals and by the time she was a teenager, Nasrin was responsible for preparing dinners for her family of 10.

Nasrin’s interest in food didn’t stop in the kitchen. She also started learning about the U.S. food system, nutrition, and the benefits of organic ingredients which led her to become certified as a health coach.

Nasrin opened Jazze’s to offer authentic Afghan food prepared with organic, local ingredients. The Jazze’s menu caters to a variety of dietary needs and preferences including paleo, vegan, and gluten-free options.

Check out the Jazze's catering menu here:https://foodinnovationnetwork.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Jazzes-featured-menu-items.pdf

11/20/2024

Meet Chef Mwana Moyo.

“Moyo” means “heart” in Swahili, a last name befitting for a community-oriented chef. Alongside serving mouth-watering flavors to hungry people, Mwana works as a caregiver and social services case manager.

Mwana is from Zanzibar, Tanzania, and uses skills in the kitchen taught to her by her grandma, as well as traditional spices such as cumin, cloves, black pepper, garam masala, and tamarind masala to offer authentic East African food at Moyo Kitchen.

Food from Moyo Kitchen is halal.

Mwana loves to cater events and parties because it gives her a chance to offer various options. When you or someone you know needs to feed a group of people, let Mwana show you how she cooks with love.

https://moyokitchen.square.site/

11/15/2024

Please read our latest news: Important News from Global to Local - https://mailchi.mp/93dbceb0596d/important-news-from-food-innovation-network-and-spice-bridge