Chris Paciora is a woman who has always been interested in food.
Four years after watching the first episode of The Great Food Truck Race on Food Network, Paciora was on the show, just as she told her son she would be.
“The Food Truck Race came on and I thought ‘OK, a food truck would be a great thing,’ and I told my son, ‘I’m going to have a food truck one day, and I’m gonna be on that show,’ and he was kinda just like ‘Yeah right, mom,'” said Paciora, owner of the award-winning Spice It Up food truck.
Paciora’s career in food began with catering, but she said she wanted to do more. She planned to open a take-out curry restaurant until one of her friends asked her how she knew that the concept of a curry restaurant would work.
It was her friend’s suggestion that prompted her to start Spice It Up and test it as a food truck. Five years later, Paciora has exceeded the expectations she set for herself.
Within a year of owning her food truck, Paciora was invited to hold a spot at Phoenix Public Market’s Food Truck Fridays. According to Paciora, Food Truck Friday is among the highest levels of the food truck strata in Phoenix.
“I like to set goals for myself and then reach them,” Paciora said. “And then I set another one even higher.”
Paciora and Spice It Up have won Best Dish at the Queen Creek Olive Mill People’s Choice Awards a total of three times and won Food Truck Caravan Best Dish in 2014. The truck was eliminated from The Great Food Truck Race the third episode in season six of the show, which aired earlier this year.
“I am extremely competitive so … if there was a cooking contest, I was there,” Paciora said. “I love cooking contests, anything where I’m competing. That is why the Great Food Truck Race was so much fun, because it was one big, huge competition.”
Nichole Mellor, a Spice It Up sales manager, was one of the two Spice It Up employees on the show with Paciora. She described Paciora as passionate, creative and a mentor.
“She is hardworking. She is inspiring to be around,” Mellor said. “Her knowledge of spices is just mind-blowing, how she can create simple dishes to more complex dishes just by using spices.”
The spices they use aren’t about the heat but about the flavor they give the food, Paciora said.
“We make our own spice blends from hand; combine all our flavors, which are all authentic to the country that they come from,” Paciora said. “It’s really worth trying and eating it because we love the people that say they don’t like curry because we want to change their mind. Everything is made from scratch. Every single thing on the truck.”
The most popular dishes from Spice It Up are the Cambodian spiced ginger beef and the chicken tikka masala. Paciora said her favorite dish is the Thai red curry.
One of Paciora’s favorite memories with Thai red curry was after a woman from Thailand gave the dish her approval. When the woman asked for a recommendation, Spice It Up workers told her the dish was authentic and that Paciora made it all from scratch, right down to the paste. The woman was skeptical but ordered the dish. She then came back and asked for more, encouraging others in line to try the curry as well, Paciora said.
“We are proud of our food and we just like people to try it and give it a chance,” Paciora said.
Jon Nairn, a first-time Spice It Up customer and IT Manager in Phoenix, said that he enjoyed his experience with the truck.
“Fantastic. On a scale of one to 10 — an 11,” Nairn said. “Very friendly here, very friendly behind the counter, so a good experience. Good presentation of information, easy to find. Don’t need to look to find the prices. Don’t need to look to find the ingredients, so I appreciated that.”
Paciora said the praise and approval from her customers, as well as watching them “take a bite of the food and telling me it’s the best thing they ever ate,” is the best part of owning the truck.
Contact the reporter at Ellanna.Koontz@asu.edu.
