Our Story

 

ENAK Seasonings is a story you can taste.

I’ve loved food as far back as I can remember. Not only eating food, I love everything about it. I love the way it brings people together. I love how life’s biggest moments are so closely connected to food. I love the look of joy on someone’s face when they taste something amazing, especially when it’s something I made.

It was this love of food that led me into foodservice as a career choice. Life is unpredictable though, and long story short - in 2009 I boarded a plane headed to China for one year that turned into eight years in three different countries.

During those years I learned that food is more than just flavor for our tongues and fuel for our bodies. I learned it is culture. The first meal I ate in China was dumplings, which beyond being a tasty food represent wealth and prosperity in Chinese culture. The person who picked me up from the airport and took me to my apartment wasn’t just stopping somewhere for food. He was introducing me to Chinese culture.

Food is part of who we are, wherever we come from and whatever culture we belong to. Throughout my years overseas I both excitedly sought out new flavors, new dishes, new cuisines, and desperately longed for tastes from home. 

When I came back to Alabama in 2017 the situation reversed. I was enjoying rediscovering my own culture, but missed the foods and experiences from Asia I had come to love. I missed hotpot restaurants in China. I missed the food courts with dozens of vendors in Malaysia. I missed the street food carts in Indonesia. I learned quickly that cooking dishes from my time abroad in a very real sense took me back to those places. Making Taiwanese three cup chicken took me back to the little restaurant behind my wife’s office where we often ate during her lunch breaks while we were falling in love. Korean food took me back to the restaurant where a group of the best friends I’ve ever had ate after an epic day of adventuring in Beijing. Cooking those dishes reminded me of some of the best moments and greatest times of my life.

In this same time period I began to prioritize making healthy food taste great in order to preserve my long term health and also got into cycling. Then, in 2020 when exploring the idea of racing on the bike I decided I wanted to become an IRONMAN as my next challenge, and I took on a new relationship with food. I began to understand how food not only pleases our taste buds but fuels our bodies. 

Suddenly, I was working a full-time job, pastoring a small church, and training for IRONMAN with a wife and a child at home. Eating quick meals that met my nutritional needs became important. I mastered making great tasting, nutritious meals quickly. 

The journey to IRONMAN took a little longer than I expected at the beginning. Swimming was physically hard. Then I got in the open water for the first time and discovered a fear I had never known before. I mean full panic. I did not give up on my dream though, and in September 2023 I crossed the finish line and heard the words I had dreamed of for three years. “Philip Lee! You. Are. An. IRONMAN!”

Immediately, I asked the question, “What else am I capable of?”

I spent most of 2024 trying to find the answer to that question, until all these experiences, my story, converged together in the creation of what is now ENAK Seasonings.

One day in September I cooked a tri tip roast using the seasoning I’d developed over the years for steak. As I ate I had the thought that I would pay for this seasoning if I hadn’t created it. An idea was born.

I’d recently listened to a speech my coach had given titled “Enter Action with Boldness”. So I entered action. With boldness. I bought some supplies to bottle the seasoning and shared what I was doing. Coach pushed me to go faster than I planned. Within a week I offered my teammates a four-pack sampler of seasonings. 18 people signed up. 

The only problem was I actually only had my steak seasoning (which I didn’t even have a standard formula for because I always threw it together by feel), now known as Four Pepper Blend, and my taco seasoning. So I had to create. 

Instantly my mind went to my time overseas. I didn’t want to create the 1001st different chicken seasoning or honey bbq rub. I wanted to share something new and different. 

I developed my version of a seasoning used on skewered meats and vegetables in China, and another based on a fried chicken recipe from Indonesia. When I sent the sampler packs out I included a printout with information about the seasonings, including the backstories from my experiences.

The two major themes that came out of that offering were 1) my spice blends were really good, and 2) people loved the stories about the origins and my experiences with them. 

ENAK, which means delicious in the Indonesian language, and our theme of “Explore the world of flavor” were developed out of this.

Something awoke in me through this process. I found a creativity I’d never known before, moving quickly beyond creating my versions of flavors I’d experienced to some that were completely original. I had fun choosing names. I found myself more confident, more optimistic, more alive than I’d ever been before. 

So ENAK Seasonings is my story in flavor. But it is more than just my story. It is the story of my wife introducing me to Indonesia. It is the story of experiencing life in China with the friends I made there. It is the story of all of us, because food is central to our identity as humans.

I invite you to explore the world of flavor with us! Try something new and different. 

Sit down with us at a plastic table on a Beijing sidewalk.

Order street food in Busan, South Korea.

Sit down to a cup of ginger coffee at a cafe in Indonesia.

Create your own memories around food using our flavors, and write your own story.