Ian Purkayastha

"I’ve never considered myself a strong reader or writer. When I was younger, I had some hardships with reading and writing, and I never thought of myself as someone who could pull this off. To a degree it was challenging. In my everyday life, I’m pretty private and reserved, so the hardest part was taking personal emotion and putting it on the page and putting myself out there…"

"Everything I've learned in these nine years has been self taught — that's not to say I've had a lot of help along the way in terms of meeting so many amazing people in this industry. But I have always loved cooking, and I grew up cooking with my grandfather and my mother, and entertaining and cooking for people was always such of strong importance. And so I’ve just applied that same passion for food to truffles."

"At the end of the day, I don’t think it had anything to do with my age; I was successful because I could speak intelligently about the products, and because I had, at the end of the day, a really high-quality product. Obviously, there was some initial pushback from customers due to my age, but it just got to the point where I found my niche and got into a rhythm."

"There’s just so much unknown information exotic ingredients, so my hope is to educate the reader, and take them on this journey to procuring and exploring these exotic ingredients around the world—from Serbia to meth heads in Oregon."