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Welcome to Biscuits and Jam from Southern Living. I'm Sid Evans, editor-in-chief of Southern Living magazine.

And in this episode, I'm talking with a North Carolina chef who's pushing the boundaries of southern food.

Marijuana Irani grew up in India, where his family ran a kind of bed and breakfast for spiritual travelers from the West. Marijuana would sometimes play hooky from school to go sample the

incredible street food of his hometown. But once he moved to the U.S. for business school,

he found little resemblance between the Indian restaurants here and the food of his youth.

After 10 years in the luxury car business, he decided to open a restaurant of his own called

Chai Pani that brought Indian street food to Asheville, North Carolina, and that was recently

named as the most outstanding restaurant in America by the James Beard Foundation.

I've eaten there, and I'm here to tell you

it's incredible. We'll talk about all that and the definition of mind-blasting hospitality on this

week's Biscuits and Jam. Marijuana, Ronnie, welcome to Biscuits and Jam. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Where am I reaching you right now?

I am in my little cottage at the back of my house in Asheville, North Carolina.

It's actually Molly's little cottage, but I've appropriated for this discussion.

Oh, great. I love that town so much.

You're very lucky to have landed there, and I know you've really become a

part of the fabric of that community. Yeah, it's an easy town to love. It really is one of those

few places where you kind of have no choice but to be part of the community. You're going to see

people, you're going to run into them in the grocery store on the street and the restaurant,

and Chai Pani having become such a landmark, it's sort of unavoidable, occupational hazard.

...