CHEF ON THE ROAD
How Does A Chef Keep Learning?
Over a decade of travelling through India’s kitchens, farms, forests, and food memories. Discover the journeys that have played an integral part in shaping ChefTZac and The Locavore.
In 2013, Chef Thomas Zacharias—or Chef TZac—spent time travelling and cooking across Europe—moving through kitchens in France, Italy, and Spain, observing how deeply regional food cultures were understood, respected, and documented. It was during these journeys that a quiet discomfort set in. He realised that while he was learning to read landscapes and traditions abroad, he hadn’t explored any in India—his own country—with the same curiosity, patience, or depth. This realisation stayed with him when he returned home.
Soon after, he boarded a flight to Bengaluru, then taking a winding drive through the mist-covered hills of Coorg to Madikeri. The roads were narrow, the air thick with the scent of wet earth and coffee blossoms, and the only thing louder than the crickets was his anticipation. He was on his way to cook with Nimmi Chengappa, an extraordinary home cook who welcomed him into the kitchen at her homestay, Elephant’s Corridor.
In her outdoor kitchen, Nimmi slow-cooked kaad mange—a savoury curry made with tiny local wild mangoes—talking him through how each ingredient was sourced from the land around her, and what it meant to her family. She showed him how to make akki otti—rice flour flatbreads rolled by hand and pressed with effortless rhythm. Nimmi did not have a recipe; she was cooking from memory and practice. Standing in that kitchen, ChefTZac recognised a form of knowledge no cookbook or professional training had prepared him for. That moment marked a quiet but decisive shift.
What followed would eventually become known as Chef on the Road (COTR)—a way of exploring places through food, guided by a chef’s curiosity and a constant desire to learn. Across kitchens, markets, farms, and forests, it became a practice of learning from home cooks, food growers, and communities, uncovering lesser-known ingredients, documenting disappearing food traditions, and engaging with techniques rarely found in professional kitchens.
Over time, for ChefTZac, India emerged as the most sustained and meaningful focus of this work. Travelling across the country, he stepped outside the fine-dining bubble to better understand what it takes to grow, gather, preserve, and cook food—and the people and ecosystems that make this possible.
At the same time, COTR was never limited by geography. Through the years, ChefTZac has also continued to cook, observe, and take careful notes in kitchens across Asia and Europe, learning from different food cultures while returning, again and again, to India with sharper questions and deeper context.
What began as a personal reckoning grew into a decade-long exploration—part travelogue, part research, part documentation. ChefTZac moved through markets, kitchens, fields, forests, and festivals, learning from home cooks, farmers, foragers, and community elders who carry culinary knowledge across generations. Whether fermenting soybeans into akhuni in Kohima, tracing layered influences in Chettinad kitchens in Karaikudi, observing temple cooking in Odisha, or spending time with the Velip community in Cotigaon, Goa, each journey deepened his understanding of how taste is shaped by place, season, memory, and labour.
With a natural ease behind the camera, ChefTZac began documenting what he encountered—stills from forest kitchens, short videos of unfamiliar cooking techniques, annotated ingredient close-ups—initially for the pleasure of storytelling. As the audience grew, so did the possibility of using these stories to widen perspectives on what, why, and how we eat, and to quietly challenge rigid ideas of what constitutes “good” or “authentic” food.
As of 2025, Chef on the Road has travelled through over 25 Indian states and several countries, and continues as an ongoing practice—one rooted in learning, listening, and returning with greater care and context.
From ChefTZac’s long but adventurous time on the road, here are three that he considers as highlights:
Flavours of Bhoi cuisine at Mei-Ramew Café, Meghalaya (2024)
Run by Dial Mukteh, and supported by the North East Slow Food & Agrobiodiversity Society (NESFAS), Mei-Ramew Café in Shillong, Meghalaya, celebrates indigenous ingredients and traditional cooking techniques passed down over generations. Here, guests on the 2024 Chef on the Road trip ate wild greens they couldn’t name, watched elders ferment bamboo in clay jars, and realised that entrepreneurship doesn’t always look like a new business—it can even be the act of preserving something old.
Dial Mukteh’s kitchen and efforts at bringing back the Bhoi cuisine she grew up with was also featured in The Locavore: In Meghalaya’s Khweng, Dial Muktieh Remembers Foraging at Dusk
Learning sustainability from the Ramponkars of Goa (2022–23)
The Ramponkars are a traditional fishing community in Goa whose practices date back centuries. Their methods—unlike industrial trawling—are seasonal, small-scale, and respectful of marine cycles. ChefTZac, along with conservationist Dr. Aaron Savio Lobo, had the opportunity to observe fishers from the Ramponkar community up close. To watch them launch their canoes at dawn, drag in the nets by hand, and cook their catch on open fires was an education in conservation. What does “sustainable” really mean, if not listening to the rhythms of the sea and its keepers?
Pahadi Kitchens of Uttarakhand (2021)
In Uttarakhand, ChefTZac encountered a diverse food culture shaped by altitude, season, and restraint. At the home of Kriti Bisht and Ashish Godara of Slowness Himalayas in Basgaon, meals opened with Nimbu Saan—a dish comprising galgal (Pahadi nimbu) hand-mixed with jaggery, yoghurt, bhang ka namak, and herbs, sharp and bracing, meant to wake the palate. Jeevan da, regarded locally as the village’s finest cook, prepared Bichu Buti ka Saag, boiling and puréeing Himalayan stinging nettle before cooking it slowly in mustard oil with cumin, garlic, and chilli until it turned rich and deeply satisfying.
At Deodar Homestay in Almora, Prakash cooked a Pahadi Mutton Curry, browning meat and onions patiently in mustard oil with whole spices. In Tons Valley, with Anand Sankar, days began with Baadi—mandua (finger millet) cooked to a soft mound with ghee and honey—and ended with Hyun, fresh snow flavoured with sea buckthorn and dried apricot pulp, eaten together after snowfall.
On the Road with The Locavore
When A Chef Keeps Learning, How Does He Share His Knowledge?
Since founding The Locavore in 2022—a platform committed to doing good through food—ChefTZac has brought a renewed sense of purpose to his travels. These journeys are no longer just about discovery, but also about communities, landscapes, and creating impact.
In 2023, he led a four-day Chef on the Road experience in Jokai, Assam, with producer partner Fearless Tea. Twelve curious guests joined him to trace the journey of tea from soil to cup—walking through shaded plantations, meeting tea pluckers, tasting fresh leaves, and eating local cuisine together.
In 2024, the journey extended into Meghalaya. This time, the focus was on wild greens, fermented bamboo, tribal markets, and monsoon-soaked landscapes. Guests cooked with hyperlocal ingredients and listened to the stories behind them. In 2025, Chef on the Road travelled to Jharkhand, timed with the blooming of mahua flowers. In collaboration with producer partner Wild Harvest, the journey explored forest foods, seed rituals, Adivasi cooking, and the rich intersections of biodiversity and belonging.
But for ChefTZac, these journeys haven’t been solely about eating but about tracing food back to its source. Where does it come from? Who grows, gathers, or prepares it? What knowledge and labour shape each ingredient? And how do our choices as eaters impact the environment, communities, and culture?
5 Things You Can Expect from any COTR Experience
Every Chef on the Road experience is different, and this is by design. Some days begin at sunrise, walking through forest paths with expert foragers. Others end with stories around a chulha in someone’s backyard. But no matter where we go, certain experiences anchor our itinerary:
- You’ll taste at least half a dozen ingredients you’ve never encountered before—local, seasonal, and often wild. This could mean mahua flowers freshly fallen during summer harvest in Jharkhand; forest greens like kurdu or gharbandi in Palghar; jakhia seeds in the hills of Kumaon; koorka (Chinese potato) in Kerala home kitchens; or dalle chillies at their seasonal peak in Gangtok—each rooted in place, season, and everyday practice.
- You’ll learn how to cook at least three to four recipes that are unique to a region, from the people who have kept them alive. These could be heirloom dishes, festival preparations, or using forest-foraged staples.
- You’ll have a conversation with someone who grows, harvests, or prepares food, one that shifts how you make decisions as a consumer. Whether it’s a millet farmer, a fisher, or a seed keeper, these are the people who keep our food systems running. Meeting them creates a kind of accountability that’s hard to shake off.
- You’ll visit a local market, and see how it’s a rich space to learn about a region’s people, their histories, and identity. You’ll speak to knowledgeable vendors, smell and touch a range of produce, and think of interconnectedness in food in ways that you haven’t before.
- You’ll make at least two new friends. It’s hard to say how we strike up friendships, so maybe it’s a fellow traveller, an inspiring culinary chronicler, or even a furry creature who easily warmed up to you along the way.
What’s Next for Chef on the Road
In the coming years, ChefTZac hopes to travel through regions that remain unexplored in the COTR timeline—Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh—places rich with forest foods, seasonal rituals, and culinary traditions that deserve more attention.
COTR will also continue to evolve as a shared experience. Alongside personal research trips, there will be short visits to The Locavore’s producer partners—tea gardens, millet farmers, forest-produce gatherers, fishing communities—where travellers can see how ingredients are grown, harvested, and protected. For those seeking deeper immersion, longer COTR journeys will continue in landscapes where food, ecology, and culture are inseparable.
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