LFC MUMBAI | NOVEMBER 2025
I’ve been fascinated by Indian food for almost half my life now. I’m 41 today, but the memory that changed everything for me goes back to when I was 23, when I met an Indian chef from Kolkata in Japan. He cooked a thin, soupy, chicken-and-potato curry—nothing like the heavy restaurant “naan-and-curry” dishes I had always assumed was Indian food. His version tasted like something you could make at home. It was surprising, delicate, and it stayed with me.
For the next 17 years, I tried to understand Indian food dish by dish, cooking it in my small Japanese kitchen in Hiroshima, trying to learn about spice levels and the emotions behind each dish.
Fifteen trips to India, and three-and-a-half years of living here later, the country has become less of a mystery to me. But I only truly began to understand India—its people, its humour, its generosity, its chaos—after I found The Locavore’s food community. I attended a Local Food Club (LFC) meetup through an Indian friend, then attended yet another time. Now it has become the space where I feel most connected to the city I live in.
When I learnt of the theme for the September edition of LFC— Know Your Desi Ingredients—I immediately thought of achaar. Fermentation and preservation have always been close to my heart. Japanese fermentation techniques like ‘hakko’ and Indian pickling traditions feel very distinctive yet so similar. I even have a small business called Art of Pickle, which I run with women from a tiny island in Hiroshima who make Japanese-style pickles with me. Here, in Mumbai, I used a mango pickle made by an older Parsi woman, Zenobia, whom I came across by chance. I bought her achaar from a shop behind The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, noticed her phone number on the label, called her, and before long, we became friends. Now I lend her a helping hand sometimes at Parsi or East Indian community sales. She treats me like a grandson; I respect her deeply.
For the LFC, I knew I wanted to bring something that lived between India and Japan—something that didn’t flatten either tradition but allowed both to breathe together. That became the Miso Achaar with Lotus Root. I used ‘aka miso’ because it can be heated; I sautéed it with garlic and spring onions, then added the mango pickle for an Indian flavour. The achaar carried all the salt the dish needed. I fried lotus root slices separately until they turned crisp, then folded them in. It was a simple preparation, but for me, it represented the flavours I love—miso meeting achaar, Hiroshima meeting Mumbai.
The second dish emerged from pure curiosity. I had never cooked water chestnuts before, and didn’t even know what they were, which fit perfectly with the theme. So, I walked through Colaba Vegetable Market, speaking to vegetable sellers in my basic and broken Hindi, picking up anything unfamiliar. That’s how I found the fresh water chestnuts. The inspiration came from the Japanese dish Kuri Gohan—chestnut rice cooked with dashi—but I wanted to make a vegetarian version. Instead of dashi, I relied on tomatoes for umami, added chopped water chestnuts along with rice, and pressure-cooked everything together. The flavour was gentle and paired well with the miso achaar. I didn’t expect it to disappear so quickly at the meetup! I went back for a second helping and found the pot empty, which made me laugh.
"My relationship with my mother was complicated, as layered as the meal itself. Like a dish with changing flavours, it had both bitter and sweet notes, salt, and heat."
This experience mattered especially because my first LFC dish, a few months earlier, had been Fuchuyaki, a Hiroshima speciality similar to okonomiyaki but with noodles. Some people couldn’t eat it because it wasn’t vegetarian, which made me sad. I’m proud of my food, and sharing it is an important part of why I cook. When people can’t taste it, something in me feels a bit let down. I realised then that living in India requires a kind of openness—not changing myself, but understanding the people around me better, learning their choices and habits. This also taught me the infamous Indian practice of ‘jugaad’.
At the LFC, I felt welcomed in a way that’s hard to describe. Even beyond language, there was a warmth that made me comfortable. People were curious about what I had brought—they were generous with their reactions and genuinely interested in the stories behind the food.
Being part of the LFC has shown me a version of India I couldn’t have discovered alone. Every ingredient here has a history. People carry memories in their cooking, and when they share a plate with you, they share a small piece of themselves. This community has helped me understand not just Indian food, but Indian people—their humour, their honesty, their openness to new things and new people.
While I still feel like a visitor in many ways, when I place my dish on the LFC table, watch people taste it, and hear their reactions, I feel like I am among friends. It feels like I have a small place here too.