About Maison Kojira

Maison Kojira is an independent food house in Bangkok making foundational foods and non-alcoholic drinks with exceptional ingredients, deep flavour and no shortcuts.

Why Maison Kojira

The things you eat and drink most often deserve the most attention. Salt, something good to drink, the food you eat every day, the ingredients you cook with: these small choices repeat every day, which is exactly why we care so much about getting them right for you.

Much of modern food production has optimised these things for cost, speed and scale, while giving up flavour, ingredient quality and the processes that once created both. We think everyday food deserves the same exceptional ingredients, deep flavour and attention as the meals you make when you have time. Clean-label food that tastes delicious.

We choose ingredients for their character and use them generously, because more is more. We preserve lemons for six months, age garlic slowly until dark and sweet, and ferment mushrooms for depth.

The aim is food you reach for again and again: food that makes a healthy meal something you genuinely look forward to cooking and eating. Food that fits into your daily life and lets you eat and drink exceptionally well, without ordering in, spending all day in the kitchen or having a private chef cooking it for you.

100% Natural Means 100%

We read ingredient lists closely. We know how carefully food claims can be worded, and how much they can leave unsaid. Phrases like “made with real ingredients,” “naturally flavoured” or “no artificial preservatives” can sound more complete than they are. Ours are deliberately simple to decode.

Kojira Black Garlic Salt: mineral salt (72%), black garlic (28%).
Kojira Preserved Lemon Salt: lemon (49%), mineral salt (34.7%), lemon juice (16.3%).
Kojira Fermented Mushroom Salt: mineral salt (75%), shiitake (15%), eringi (6%), shimeji (4%).

That’s it.

Everything that goes into the product goes on the label. We don’t add anything to make it taste “better,” last longer, bulk it out or make production easier. There’s no shortcut to flavour like this.

We get the flavour from the ingredients themselves, and from what time, heat and fermentation can do to them: we preserve lemons, age garlic, ferment mushrooms, roast spices, brew tea and infuse botanicals. We use plenty of the ingredients that matter. More, until more stops tasting better.

Explore the Maison Kojira Collection →

Sustainably Made

Luxury that depletes is a contradiction. Good food depends on good foundations: healthy land, careful growers, clean ingredients and packaging chosen with the same care.

We source ingredients from the places where they belong. Our mineral salt comes from family land in Isaan. Wild tea comes from the highlands of Chiang Rai. We buy Thai-grown produce locally, and when we work with smallholder farmers, we pay promptly rather than making them carry our risk.

We look at packaging the same way: what touches the food, what protects it, how long it lasts and what gets thrown away. We favour glass, metal and paper, and avoid plastic touching the food or drink. We want the way we source and make our products to preserve the quality we depend on, not slowly undermine it.

Read our Sustainability Philosophy →

Food for How We Like to Live

We make food we want to eat every day: deeply delicious, built from real ingredients, and designed to strengthen rather than drain. Food that supports the gut, the mind, energy, focus, recovery, and long-term resilience. Food that brings diversity back into urban diets without making cooking more complicated.

Food should be delicious. Cooking should be simple enough that ordering in stays the exception. What you consume should support how you want to live and perform.

We build for people who want food to reinforce the rest of their life:

Sleeping well.
Training hard.
Thinking clearly.
Hosting friends.
Living deliberately.

Our Story

Maison Kojira grew out of two places: Isaan and Amsterdam. In Northeast Thailand, Prakay grew up close to food, farming and her family’s salt fields, where water buffalo still pass the fields in the morning. In Amsterdam, Prakay and Jacob spent years working across hospitality, health, agriculture and food systems. After moving to Bangkok, those different threads began to come together.

Salt was the obvious place to begin. Prakay’s family has salt fields in Isaan, and salt touches almost everything we cook. Preserved lemon, black garlic, fermented mushrooms and saffron followed, then tea, honey and the beginnings of our non-alcoholic drinks.

The Founders

Maison Kojira is 100% family-owned and was founded by Prakay Vichapa and Jacob Spreeuwenberg.

Prakay Vichapa

Prakay grew up in Isaan, where food stayed close to land, family and work. When other children talked about office jobs, she wanted to be a farmer.

“They wanted to be something important,” she says. “I said farmer. They laughed. But I thought good food makes a good life.”

Her family’s salt fields now supply Maison Kojira’s mineral salt.

Jacob Spreeuwenberg

Jacob grew up in the Netherlands and came to food through agriculture, health and food systems. He spent years building and directing investment funds focused on food and agriculture across Europe and Africa, alongside a longstanding interest in functional medicine.

Prakay and Jacob later built Het Massagehuys in Amsterdam, where much of their work centred on recovery from the demands of modern life. Over time, another question became more interesting: how do you help people become stronger in the first place?

Food became the obvious place to look.

Where the Name Comes From

The name Kojira comes from Koji (麹), a culture of transformation, and Ra (𓂋), a symbol of renewal and energy.

Microbial and solar. Growth and warmth. Together they reflect the two forces behind much of what we make: transformation through living processes, and the energy that sustains them.

What We Make

We make gourmet salts and non-alcoholic drinks in Bangkok.

Salt was our starting point because it touches almost everything we cook. We pair our mineral salt from Isaan with ingredients that can genuinely change a dish: six-month preserved lemon, slow-aged black garlic and fermented mushrooms.

Our drinks are built with the same attention to flavour and structure. Tea, honey, fruit, botanicals, fermentation and acidity give them enough character to stand on their own, work with food, replace alcohol at the table, or simply become something you want to open at the end of the day.

Made in Bangkok

Bangkok is part of Maison Kojira. It is a city where extraordinary food exists at every level, from a market stall to some of the world’s best restaurants. We work surrounded by people who take flavour seriously, and by ingredients worth getting excited about: tropical fruit, herbs, spices, mushrooms, honey, tea, citrus and produce grown across Thailand. Fermentation, preservation, acidity, heat, aroma and balance are part of the food culture around us.

Maison Kojira is developed and made here. Bangkok gives us exceptional ingredients and an extraordinary food culture.

Bangkok is the gourmet capital of the world and sets a high bar. We like that.