Chef Zac goes to Japan
The Executive Chef of The Bombay Canteen on decoding life lessons from the Japanese kitchen. Also, where to eat and drink (and shop for shirts) in Japan
Whether it’s eating premium cuts of wagyu , stumbling upon hole-in-the wall restaurants or discovering new vegetables (like shungiku or spring chrysanthemums, which pop up in soups and steamed dishes), Japan is a culinary wonderland for chefs.
Japan, to me, also feels like a country on a different plane of existence. The attention to detail is present in every aspect of life. I remember coming across a vending machine with white shirts at a station in Tokyo, with a shower next to it, for anyone who’d missed the last train and had to sleep there!
Earlier this year, an initiative by Door to Asia, an organisation that works with the 2011 tsunami-hit regions in northern Japan, took me to the Hakoneyama Festival in Rikuzentakata, Tōhoku. I left India with a box of moras bhaji, packets of hing and kodampuli and other ingredients to cook dishes like meen mappas at the festival. But the plan was to stick around for three weeks and make a #ChefOnTheRoad trip out of the experience. That’s how the learning began.
— As told to Surya Praphulla Kumar
Thomas Zacharias, Executive Chef at The Bombay Canteen, highlights culinary diversity in his #ChefontheRoad series on Instagram









