A bubbling pot hisses on the stove top. A rich aroma snakes through the room. Fast hands slice with precision. Uncooked rice skitters across the bottom of a saucepan. A laugh is shared, over the shoulder, between heads bent in concentration. It’s hard to know if these are memories of North Shutsharawan’s childhood or scenes from today, in the Nit Noi Provisions kitchen. Growing up, a simmering crock pot of bone broth was a fixture in North’s family kitchen, a precursor to many meals. Decades later, similar pots quietly cook on Nit Noi’s stovetops in their kitchen in Norwalk, tended by team as close as family.
What began as a ski season adventure has taken a year-round hold on North and his wife, Jill. In 2016, the newlyweds headed to Telluride, Colorado, where the initial enticement of warm, satiating après-ski meals soon lost their appeal. Navigating the local food scene, they found a strong southern and TexMex influence: dense, carbohydrate-rich mountain-fare with huge portions of meat. Eager for a reprieve, they tried their hand at making a familiar comfort food: North’s mother’s bone broth. Rich and robust, bone broth satisfies both palate and appetite with a lightness that would send a skier back to the slopes, rather than the couch.
The experimenting that began in that Colorado kitchen followed them back to their home in Norwalk, where they quickly tapped into the local farm-to-table community. With friends lending resources, insight, and support, North and Jill brought their cooking to the Westport Farmers Market in 2016 under the name “Nit Noi Provisions.” A Thai expression, nit noi translates to “a little bit,” a nod to the company’s philosophy of making simple, clean, honest food, all of which begins with their celebrated bone broth.
Broths have been a culinary staple across cultures for hundreds of years, each unique to its locale: Korea’s seolleongtang uses beef bones, while sopa de lima simmers chicken bones; Pork-based tonkotsu is often the basis for Japanese ramen, and the tuna-derived garudhiyais a traditional Maldavian dish. Recent dietary trends, however, have created confusion around the terminology for dishes that are similar in spirit, yet distinctly different. Bone broth is essentially stock, which is made from meat-stripped bones and joints that are boiled over a long period of time to release their collagen; the result is a viscous, gelatinous liquid. Non-bone broth, on the other hand, is thinner as it’s produced using meat, not bones. Most standard broths take only a few hours to make, whereas stock and bone broth can cook for up to 24 hours or more.
Boiling the bones and joints of an animal over long periods of time draws out the collagen, bone marrow, amino acids, and minerals, giving bone broth notoriety for its purported health benefits. Fans boast its ability to produce increased energy, better sleep, younger-looking skin, stronger bones and joints, and an improved immune system. While science has yet to fully support these claims, many feel that hundreds of years of practice and observed benefits shouldn’t be dismissed. A mother of two, Jill praises bone broth for the rejuvenating effects she notices in her hair and on her skin, and she incorporates it into her daily diet.
Nit Noi’s first challenge, however, wasn’t marketing their broth’s health benefits; rather, it was simply introducing their product. They faced a customer base that was largely unfamiliar with the concept of bone broth, and those who were looked skeptically at Jill, a white woman selling a traditional Thai dish. So, they decided to introduce something more familiar to their market line-up: Thai noodle soup. Using rice noodles and locally-sourced vegetables to catch the eyes of passersby, they could then educate them on the bone broth, which was the base for the noodle soup. The hook worked, and the buzz soon spread.
Delicious broth, however, is only one component of the business Jill and North have created – being as green and “clean” as possible is also central to Nit Noi’s business philosophy. They source their materials locally, whenever possible, and are committed to using organic and non-GMO ingredients – as well as environmentally friendly packaging that has little or no single-use plastics – as part of their mission to have an environmental footprint as light as the broth itself.
The value of the community around their business, too, is a foundational tenet of their practice. While many new food businesses take an all-or-nothing approach, riddled with anxiety and pressure, Nit Noi sets a different example with a calm, focused, and supportive work environment that is built around their staff. Their tightly knit team of employees are akin to family for Jill and North, a fact made all the more apparent by the regular presence of their children in the Nit Noi kitchen. “It’s reflective of our values,” Jill says of their dedication to building a core team that is comprised mostly of older people with families, each of whom are dedicated to the growth of the company and a healthy work-life balance. New staff members are brought on for specific roles, but with the goal of ultimately incorporating them into every aspect of the company; in the process, they grow together.
Having persevered through the incredible challenges that COVID-19 brought to small food businesses, Jill and North are optimistic about their trajectory. They see the success of Nit Noi Provisions as a stepping stone in the path towards, as North describes, “moving the needle” in our relationship with food. With financial success, credibility, and a positive-change mentality, he hopes to someday be able to sit with politicians and lawmakers and use the Nit Noi story to influence food policy, to show them why we need environmentally minded change, and how it can be achieved.
Yet, it is clear that certain things are best left unchanged. Watching his son, Bear, push a toy cart around the Nit Noi kitchen, North knows he is immersing him in an experience not far different from his own: Bear’s kitchen is a little bigger and has a few more pots on the stove, but he’s surrounded by good food and an ever-growing family.
> Nit Noi Provisions: 95 Water St., South Norwalk; 203-354-4458
Rachel Precious is an oyster farmer, conservation biologist, and founder of Precious Oysters, Connecticut’s first tide-...
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