Words from founder

I was born and raised in Slovakia until I turned 18 when I went to France to study Economics. I found my “other half,” who is originally from Mauritius, and we settled close to Paris. While integrating into French society, I always enjoyed sharing my Slovak culture and food with my friends, it was part of my personality. Once our daughter was born, I started thinking about how to impart her Slovak roots: language, traditions, cultural curiosities, and history.

Every celebration was a chance to share the tastes, the smells and the sights from my joyful childhood with her. But, I had to look for recipes I didn’t always know and find or adapt ingredients that were not always available in France. Travelling to Slovakia for holidays allowed me bring back ingredients, my freezer always has Bryndza (a Slovak sheep’s milk cheese) and smoked bacon, as well as typical kitchen utensils and some Slovak decorations.

When we finally moved to the United States, after 20 years of living in France, we have much in common with French expats. French is our language at home, we have so far more French friends than “locals”, rejoice when we find a good baguette – and share the address of that exalted bakery, mourn the absence of forbidden French delicacies such as sausages, and more.

The idea of KITnDO grew from all these years of living abroad and the difficulties of finding specific items. If I was looking for items related to my heritage (from Slovakia, my native country or from France, a country where I spent half of my life), I was sure that others were as well. I am excited to share this platform and resource with you and look forward to growing the community so that wherever you are in the world you can find what connects you to your roots.