Our Story
'Our ancient experience confirms at every point that everything is linked together, everything is inseparable.'
- Dalai Lama XIV
Photo: Colin Hutton - Hutton Images
Chef Asia Kostka has always enjoyed concocting a variety of salts, sauces and condiments for her friends and family. An escape from her work in the professional kitchen, Kensal Provisions was born from her foraging adventures and inner curiosity.
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In the early 2000s, a meeting of chance changed Asia’s career trajectory. An introduction to a close-knit consortium of medical students, leading investigators and educators at the Einstein College of Medicine in New York sparked her interest in creating health-enhancing meals and elixirs. This research into the world of 'raw' food and the healing impact of ancient plants and medicine, was a way for her to re-connect with her childhood attachment to Nature.
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Kensal Provisions is built on a greater understanding of food and its implications as well as symbiosis with humans and the planet, synthesized with Asia's own spiritual journey, her degree in Psychology, and the hundreds of hours of research she has done through the years, and continuously does.
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In 2009, Asia began cooking professionally in Italy and in the UK. Over the past two decades, she has garnered experience and recognition - from being the founding culinary chef of one of Rome's first health-conscious cafés, cooking at the Rome Sustainable Food Project founded by Alice Waters at the American Academy in Rome , her involvement in the launches of Mark Hix and Gladwin brothers’ London-based restaurants, as well as institutional, corporate and private fine-dining.
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After realising something visceral was missing from her experience, she decided to leave the industry in 2013 and move on to the next phase of her journey. It was in her own kitchen in Kensal Rise that Asia coined the phrase 'Nurturing Our Nature and Cultivating Harmony', the guiding ethos of her range of nourishing condiments, cordials, teas and soups. Her vision is based on cooking in a holistic way and celebrating Nature in its purity and power.
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In an era marked by crisis and evolution, WE are called to nurture the Earth. At the same time, Earth calls upon us to honour her supportive energy and magical gifts, and to allow that bounty to nurture US.