Chef, storyteller, avid traveller – Thomas Zacharias has donned more than just the chef’s hat through his expansive career. He has been at the helm of The Bombay Canteen’s kitchen, innovating and elevating Indian regional food. Then somewhere down the line, his passion for storytelling found new purpose in exploring the nuances of what we broadly call regional Indian cuisine. He has since founded The Locavore – a space to share such stories and familiarise our palates with the source of our food.
Although regional Indian cuisines are now at the heart and soul of his work, Chef Thomas smiles as he admits that his journey as a chef actually began with European food. After studying at the Culinary Institute of America, he went on to work at Le Bernardin, an iconic Michelin star restaurant in New York City. Ironically, it was a four-month trip of exploring food across Europe that made him realise there was much he had not discovered in Indian cuisine. It was an epiphany that spurred another trip in 2014, this time spreading across about 18 different towns and cities in India.
“That trip changed my perspective around Indian food drastically,” he says.
While I knew that there was diversity in Indian cuisine, I didn’t imagine the scale and scope of it. I travelled everywhere – all the way up North to Himachal and Punjab, down South to Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Gujarat and Rajasthan in the West, eastwards to Calcutta and parts of the Northeast. I was connecting with people, going to local markets, eating street food local cuisine. I saw recipes, techniques and their way into mainstream narratives around Indian food. On that journey, I found my calling.
It was in his encounters on this eyeopening trip that he admits he felt a sense of “impending loss”. The next seven years were then spent channelling these experiences into highlighting Indian food as a chef at The Bombay Canteen. “A lot of these traditions were on the verge of getting lost and forgotten. Else, there was a sense of shame around their own food. At The Bombay Canteen, we took a very conscious call to reimagine Indian food, to elevate it and make it more interesting.”
Over time, Chef Thomas continued to travel and have richer food experiences around the country. As he experimented with recipes and found ways to balance them with the trove of stories he was collecting at the source, the goal became to not just understand what goes into the food on the plate, but also its cultural, historical and political context. “I wanted to Undhiyu made in a home in Ahmedabad, for instance, might be very different from one made in Surat, and there may even be differences between neighbours in Ahmedabad itself.”
The second step was to recreate what he had tasted and learned, ideate around each concept and elevate it while holding onto the essence of what he remembered. “Sometimes that process took a day or two, a few days, or even several months! I’d get stuck and come back around to it later. But then, it was also important for me to question it. Where does this food stand given the audience that we are catering to and keeping in mind the kind of food that excites people?”
Some dishes needed minor tweaks and some inspired him to head in a completely different direction. But with some others, he found they were exciting on their own. “One of the muscles I had to exercise a lot was restraint. Less is more. You may not always succeed either, but the idea is to get to a place where it feels right. Of course, I followed some ground rules. The deliciousness of what is on the plate always trumps the story and the inspiration. The food needs to taste good! And second, the dish needs to hold the integrity of where it takes inspiration from.”
Still, amidst all the excitement of bringing food from across the country to his guests, there was something missing. Chef Thomas describes it best as a disconnect between his work and his travel experiences. “On one hand, I was cooking in a fancy restaurant considered to be one of the best in the country, serving privileged folk who could afford it. Yes, I was changing people’s perceptions around Indian food, but it was very far removed from what I was experiencing on ground – challenges that farmers were facing, the marginalisation of indigenous communities and traditions getting forgotten. There were a lot of food system issues that I had become privy to.”
Thus began a new chapter for Chef Thomas, fuelled by the desire to bridge the gap that had been eating away at him and dig deeper into the impact he wanted to create when he set out on his food exploration adventures around the country. He stepped back from being a full-time professional chef at The Bombay Canteen. And so, The Locavore was born as a true labour of love. “The idea behind The Locavore is to create a long lasting impact through thoughtful storytelling, by bringing in diverse perspectives and supporting partners and food producers whose work we believe in. We wanted to build purposedriven communities around the country and engage with them through events and travel experiences. Essentially, the tagline is “doing good through food”, which sounds very cliche, but that really is what’s at the heart of the initiative.”
Chef Thomas was not unfamiliar with storytelling – it had been an integral part of his work throughout. The only difference was that the stories he once told through a plate had now become a part of something bigger, a community experience that he could share in new ways. With The Locavore and its team, he sought to forge a deeper connection between us and our food, and develop a greater awareness of the Indian food system. “It involves bringing in a narrative that people aren’t familiar with, to challenge their perceptions and introduce a renewed approach towards their food.”
Ideas around sustainability and organic food, which are quickly earning popularity in the food industry, went hand-in-hand with this aim. Part of the vision was demystifying these daunting words that are often misunderstood as black-andwhite. Chef Thomas sees it more as a grey area, one he hopes to break down further with The Locavore Bite. Through a number of parameters, the initiative looks into producers’ operations and practices. It dives deep into workforce treatment and wages, production processes, packaging and the source of origin that the food can be traced back to.
“There is also a lot of greenwashing that happens today,” Chef Thomas notes. “Words like ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ are thrown around very loosely. We want to challenge and encourage people to dig deeper. You have to be a little more curious and learn more about where your food comes from and how it reaches you. No organisation or restaurant can be a hundred percent sustainable. So we must also ask questions like; sustainable for whom? For the planet? For the people who are producing the food?”
Making a habit of such questioning and bringing about sustainable changes constantly, both as eaters and producers of food, is not easy, Chef Thomas admits. “There’s also a lot of shaming and guilt around sustainability, where typical conversations surrounding it become preachy. Our approach at The Locavore was to be a little kinder about it. We get people to understand it and enable them to make small changes slowly. What’s important is to educate yourself so that you can make informed choices. As long as the intention is there, and you’re working towards it at whatever pace makes sense to you, I think that’s a start!”
Chef Thomas acknowledges that pushing people to make better food choices will take time, but the journey has just begun. The team at The Locavore is in it for the long haul. At the heart of it all lies his desire to create a collaborative community that can work in tandem with organisations at all levels of the food system. “It’s not that there aren’t people and organisations and efforts that are happening across the country which are driving positive change and creating impact. But they either happen in silos, or they’re not exposed to a larger audience and they need support in some way. That’s where we come in to partner with people who align with our vision. We are definitely seeing a trend towards going back to our roots in terms of regional Indian food, which is just gonna get stronger and stronger. I want The Locavore to be at the forefront of that.”
