If you accept an invitation to the home of Shiza Shahid and her husband Amir Tehrani, you're sure to be treated to a delicious meal – perhaps with fresh produce bought at a farmers market just down the road from their Los Angeles home. It would have been cooked using – but Shadid admits “I”. I'm not the type to chat much. ”
Since founding Our Place in 2019, the entrepreneurs, with the help of business partner Zac Rozner, have created 'Always Bread' (£130) and 'Perfect Pot' (£140) (tableware). ) are the most attractive items for today's kitchens. However, it's not just about products. For Shahid, the purpose is to make a difference. No wonder she doesn't have much time for her idle chatter.
“At the end of the day, we believe business is just a collection of decisions. Even something as small as where to order lunch can help provide more than 2 million meals to food charities around the world. The more times you choose to do a little bit of kindness, even something as big as donating a meal, the more it all adds up,” says Shahid. Every time Our Place releases her new collection, she chooses a charity to benefit. Her altruism began long before she founded the company.
Shahid, who grew up in Islamabad, Pakistan, became a student activist and refugee camp volunteer, and after studying in the United States in 2013, quit his job and co-founded the Malala Fund with his Nobel laureate friend. Ta. Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
This was definitely an experience that showed her the power of people to challenge the status quo. And that's exactly what she strives for in the kitchen. Her first task was to combat toxins.
All Our Place breads are coated with the brand's proprietary non-stick coating, which is made without potentially toxic substances such as PFAS (a family of harmful compounds found in Teflon), PTFE, and PFOA. I am. “We believe these chemicals should never have been in the kitchen,” says Shahid with obvious passion. In addition to being beautiful and versatile, Our Place cookware (excluding cast iron) is made from recycled aluminum recovered from post-consumer waste rather than factory scrap.
Ultimately, Shahid wants to make home cooking more fun and encourage culturally inclusive discussions about food. Locked out of the kitchen during her childhood by her mother who wanted her to focus on her studies, she moved to New York, unable to recreate the taste she remembered in her hometown. “This act that she did to empower me at first became really disempowering,” Shahid recalls. He's now obsessed with telling the stories of other people's eating habits with his “Tradition Wear” collection. He wants you to think of Chinese New Year rice bowls and fancy fried foods. A tool that can generate golden jalebi for Diwali.
For Shahid, tradition is not about preserving the past, what she calls “the cultural vision of our great-grandparents,” but about how practices can evolve, and how that evolution can be carried out at home and at people's tables. It's about respecting how things play out. “We recently hosted an Eid party,” says Shahid. “My dining table looked very different from my parents' dining table.” fromourplace.co.uk
