During the monsoon in much of Nagaland, people often face isolation as roads are washed out and markets become inaccessible. Outside the cities, refrigeration is uncommon. In these months, bamboo shoots are essential for food security.

When Chef Thomas Zacharias also known as Chef Zac travelled to Nagaland he was thrilled to witness how the local community used bamboo not just as flavour but as survival food during the long monsoons.

When the rains begin and fresh shoots appear, families preserve them by fermenting or drying, then store them in bamboo tubes or earthen jars. Because these preserved shoots are very acidic, they last for months. They provide both flavor and a reliable vegetable source during the lean monsoon season, when few other options are available. Over generations, this practice has turned bamboo shoots from a delicacy into a vital food for survival, showing deep local knowledge of the environment.

In this interview with Mongabay India, Chef Zac, founder of The Locavore, reflects on his journey with locally grown food and shares practical ways Indians can weave hyperlocal, seasonal ingredients into their everyday meals. He also talks about how these choices connect us more deeply to farmers, traditions, and the ecosystems that sustain us.

You’ve travelled and cooked across kitchens in India. If you had to pick one local cuisine that feels closest to your heart, which one would it be—and why?

It’s impossible to choose, but if I had to, I’d say the cuisines of India’s Northeast. Cooking with communities in Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, and Assam over the past 11 years has shown me a way of eating deeply intertwined with forests, rivers, and the rhythms of the land.

For instance, the tradition of cooking with khar is central to Assamese cuisine and sometimes extends into Arunachal Pradesh. Khar is an alkali extract made by filtering water through the ash of burnt dried banana peels or stems, then added to simple preparations of rice, pulses, or seasonal greens. Dishes like lau khar (bottle gourd with banana-ash alkali) or kolposola khar (banana stem with khar) are considered cleansing and digestive, often eaten at the start of a meal.

The alkali neutralises acidity, aids digestion, and enhances the quality of basic meals. The ash-water, pale brown and slightly viscous, lends simmering greens and gourds a distinctive alkaline, grassy, lightly bitter flavour—unlike anything in mainstream Indian cooking.

India is home to countless food traditions, many of which don’t always get the spotlight. How can we build more pride in these lesser-known local cuisines and ingredients?

We need to shift perspective. Foods like millets, wild greens, or coarse grains are often dismissed as “poor man’s food,” but they are really stories of resilience and biodiversity. Celebrating them means treating them not as relics, but as living knowledge for our future. Each of us has circles of influence where this shift can begin: at home by cooking an unfamiliar local green, at work by encouraging seasonal produce in cafeterias, online by sharing forgotten recipes. These aren’t grand gestures, but they ripple outward.

At The Locavore, we see this through the Local Food Club, our free, decentralised potlucks now running in dozens of cities. When people bring a dish made with a forgotten millet or wild leaf from their hometown, something shifts. What once carried stigma suddenly becomes heritage.

Pride in lesser-known food traditions won’t come from top-down campaigns, it will come from many small circles overlapping until they form a movement. Every time we place a “forgotten” ingredient at the centre of the table with joy and curiosity, we make it harder for that ingredient and its story to disappear.

With our busy, modern lifestyles, what are some simple and practical ways Indians can bring more local and seasonal food onto their plates every day?

I think a practical way to look at it is to see local and seasonal as a rhythm to adopt. And once you fall into that rhythm, it doesn’t take more time, just a shift in defaults.

Has a moment, cooking style, or ingredient ever changed your view on food and cooking?

Yes, my first foraging walk with Sunil Bhoye in Jawhar, Palghar, introduced by Shailesh Awate of OOO Farms. It was the peak monsoon. Sunil moved through the forest like it was a pantry, naming greens such as tandalya, kurdu, keni, and explaining when to harvest them, how bitterness shifts after rain, why some are boiled plain “so the body remembers the plant, not the masala.”

Two things rewired me that day. First, food as collective ecology: foraging done in groups, seeds stored in earthen pots or bamboo stems, vegetables kept fresh by the night breeze. Second, ritual as public health: the monsoon begins with safed musli, believed to fortify immunity, and only then do other wild vegetables follow. I left understanding that “ingredient” is really a relationship, with land, memory, and people who keep that knowledge alive.

For Chef Zac, eating hyperlocal is about much more than health. It connects people to farmers, ecosystems, and communities in ways that supermarket produce often cannot.

His travels with Chef on the Road have shown him how much we stand to lose. In a market in Gundalipokar, Jharkhand, he was struck not by what he saw but by what was missing—traditional foraged greens and pulses had all but vanished, replaced by heaps of non-native broccoli. It was a clear reminder of how food choices can erode cultural and ecological diversity.

Yet, he believes the opposite is possible. Eating local food can bring back dignity to farmers, regenerate biodiversity, and help communities adapt better to climate shocks.

At a personal level, he says, “Something powerful happens when you eat what comes from your soil, grown by people whose names you might know. You feel anchored. It stops being about trends or diet, and becomes about identity and belonging.”

Food is also storytelling, says Chef Zac. Every plate, he says, carries the possibility of a narrative. What he hopes the next generation will inherit is simple but urgent: “That we didn’t look away. That when confronted with cracks in our food system—loss of biodiversity, vanishing traditions, exploitative supply chains, the climate impacts of what we eat—we took accountability.”

The story he wants every meal to tell is one of responsibility and renewal. A reminder that food is not just consumption, but care—and that our choices today can leave behind a living, resilient food culture for future generations to thrive within.

Chef Zac continues this work through The Locavore, a platform dedicated to storytelling, community building, and partnerships around India’s food systems.

Banner image: Chef Zac interaction with participants at the Local Food Club event organised in Goa. Image by The Locavore.

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Saumitrashinde Editor

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