Thomas Zacharias

Founder-Chef, The Locavore

After years at the culinary helm, Thomas decided to bring together some of his passions — storytelling, working with local produce and nurturing connections between people within the Indian food system

Interviewed by SATHYA SARAN

Thomas, The Locavore

Thomas had the perfect beginning for the calling that he would embrace later in life. He grew up in his grandma’s kitchen, smelling the fragrance of the food she stirred and boiled, fried and basted before setting the dishes on the table. Perhaps the warm reception her recipes evoked lit the fire in his heart that he too would orchestrate a career for himself where applause would follow every performance. The quickest way into people’s hearts is after all, through food.

After completing a course in Hotel Management in Manipal, armed with a Bachelor’s degree in Hotel Management, Thomas took himself off to the land of opportunity. He found plenty.

The first step of course was to hone his inherent skills. Which he set off doing by acquiring an Associate’s Degree in Culinary Arts and chef’s training at the Culinary Institute of America. It landed him a job in New York at Le Bernardin.

Thomas believes his real career began on his return. Though, when he reurned to India in 2011, he still had to find his niche. At both the Olive Beach in Bangalore where he worked as sous chef and at the Olive Bar and Kitchen in Bombay, he centred his menus around Western food. He did not realise it then, but he was searching for his unique space.

“A two-month trip across India changed me forever,” Thomas says, of the turning point in his life, that would set him on the path that he is walking on today. The journey was his way of ‘expanding the taste for Indian food’.

When he learnt that The Bombay Canteen was looking for a chef, he knew he had found the right place to put to practise what his journey across the country’s food experiences had taught him.

Being in charge of the entire kitchen operations at The Bombay Canteen, which was stirring up excitement for its clean breakaway from traditional presentations of old, Thomas created menus that dug deep into traditional recipes but served them in unusual formats and combinations. Before long, the restaurant became a popular watering hole for the ‘it’ people. The location, close to the business district that was adding a new office every day and boasted of television and media houses as well as banks, boutiques and luxury apartments in the densely built-over square miles, ensured the place was always buzzing.

But Thomas felt he wanted more.

Six years after joining The Bombay Canteen, he struck out on his own. “By the time I left Bombay Canteen in 2020, I had understood what I was looking for.” He was searching for the ambience, and the feel of his grandmother’s kitchen, which seemed to be fast vanishing from most eating places.

“I started travelling, interacting with different communities,” he says. He met farmers and fishing people, ploughed through local markets and plunged into understanding why Indians were losing touch with their food. “Indians were cooking less, ordering more. The real taste of food was fast vanishing. I discussed food traditions with the communities I met, alerted them to issues like vanishing food traditions.”

There were people and organisations working to revive our food traditions; but they were fragmented, working in silos.  And there was no communication between organisations. As such they remained either ineffective or contained into a small space of operation. I wanted to rectify this, bring it all together in some way. “That,” he adds, “was the genesis of Locavore.”

Thomas’ exhibit at the Serendipity Arts Festival’s 10-year celebration continued his story on his passion for reviving lost food traditions. Collaborating with QTP (Quasar Thakore Padamsee), Immerse design agency, and sound and light designers, he created an immersive sound and light 30-minute experience to project what food might be like in 3021, to the groups of visitors who would walk through.

In a blend of drama and science the exhibit contrasted the colours and textures of well-loved foods with dun-coloured pills that might replace actual freshly cooked dishes in the future. As more and more stoves stay unlit in kitchens with ready-to-order food being eaten on the go, Thomas sees the ultimate outcome of food for sustenance rather than taste being an inevitability.

“We are losing seeds, and biodiversity, the climate changes are wrecking their own havoc. This exhibit is my way of hoping to nudge people to do something about it,” he says. The exhibition, which he hopes to travel with, contrasts food smells we are familiar with against bland medicinal food pills which the future might offer as a means of nourishment.

But there is more.

Thomas’ The Locavore is a platform that works on six prongs to educate, highlight and persuade people to return to old, tried and tested ways of cooking and eating. “Eat locally sourced food, grow seasonal food suited to the region, and encourage local producers and food clubs,” seems to be the thrust of the website.

Recently launched, The Locavore’s Tiny Food Project reaches out to the women of the Narangi community in Alibaug, to offer a helping hand towards self-sustenance. The project, as stated in The Locavore newsletter, hopes ‘to build food-based livelihoods rooted in local culture and collective strength’. As it always prefers partnering with organisations already working in the regions they imitate a project in, The Locavore has partnered with Tiny Miracles to take the project forward. Tiny Miracles, has since 2010, been actively working in Alibaug. The Tiny Food Project will thus add significant numbers to their effort to help women from marginalised communities to find jobs or train them in employable skills.

It’s a quiet revolution, but Thomas is determined that he will light one torch from another, and spread the word of sensible, good, local food across Indian cities and across generations.