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—along with upcoming trips you can join!
Conceptualised by The Locavore’s founder, Chef Thomas Zacharias (ChefTZac), Chef on the Road began in 2013 as a way of learning about food beyond restaurant kitchens and cookbooks.
What started as solo, on-the-road research grew into a long-term exploration of India’s regional food cultures—shaped by cooking in homes, exploring markets, spending time with farmers, foragers, and fishers, and learning from people whose knowledge rarely enters mainstream narratives of Indian cuisine.
Over time, COTR became less about documenting food and more about understanding the systems around it: land, labour, season, ecology, memory, and choice.
Today, Chef on the Road exists in two forms:
Ongoing research and documentation, led by ChefTZac
Small-group journeys, where this way of travelling and learning is shared carefully with others
Each group journey is designed to be slow, place-led, and participatory—bringing together travellers, cooks, and producers to learn how food actually lives in specific landscapes, seasons, and communities.
Every COTR journey is different by design. Some take place deep in forests; others unfold on farms, in small towns, or around kitchen fires. Whether it’s cooking with foraged ingredients in Jharkhand or sharing a 35-dish long traditional breakfast in Jokai, each journey reflects ChefTZac’s belief that food is best understood through time, context, and participation.
What remains constant is the approach:
The second iteration of our Chef on the Road (COTR) trip to Jharkhand brought together six travellers to harvest fresh mahua, explore forests in the Jonha region, and learn how Jharkhand’s communities are preserving their foodways.
From dining at a 100-year-old family wada to walking through sugarcane fields—this edition of Chef on The Road explored what ‘organic’ actually entails at an ancestral farm in Maharashtra’s Bhodani village.
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—along with upcoming trips you can join!
Nine travellers came together for an immersive 4-day travel experience, savouring freshly-harvested Mahua flowers, trekking through lush landscapes, and sharing meals with local communities.
Our four-day trip to Jokai, a small town in Assam, included a traditional 35-dish breakfast, tours of Jokai’s oldest plantations, and many, many, cups of tea.
Have questions? Write to us at connect@thelocavore.in
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