Of the Same Root, Of One Cluster
A cultural-diplomacy movement honouring the thirty-four indigenous communities of Sarawak — staged across four chapters, carried by a parallel mentee thread, and held on the formal cultural record of the Sarawak State Government and UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy — Kuching.
Serumpun is a Bahasa Malaysia word. It means of the same root — of one cluster. The word names a cultural truth that the wider movement honours: that the thirty-four indigenous communities of Sarawak are not a collection of separate cuisines but a continuous body of cultural practice, growing from the same Bornean rainforest, carried forward by the same generational discipline, and read against the same ancestral register. Serumpun Sarawak is the cultural-diplomacy movement that places that body of practice on the formal cultural record.
Four chapters across 2025 – 2026
The architecture was announced complete at unveiling. What followed was execution.
The Launch
The unveiling, with state backing and UNESCO alignment. The story arrived constructed.
Chapter II · Osaka · August 2025Expo 2025 Osaka
The international debut at Seaside Studio CASO alongside World Expo 2025. The cuisine moved.
Chapter III · Mulu · October 2025Mulu — In the Land of the Hornbills
The homecoming — within Gunung Mulu National Park, ancestral land of several of the communities the wider arc honours. The cuisine returned.
Chapter IV · Kuching · April 2026The Kuching Finale
The return. The founding-year cycle closes in the city that first carried it.
The parallel thread
Not a chapter — the thread that connects all four.
The Movement in Brief
The patronage. The Sarawak State Government carries Serumpun on the formal cultural record. The Sarawak Tourism Board is the principal institutional vehicle. UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy — Kuching has endorsed the conservation and promotion work in indigenous gastronomy, food culture, and edible medicinal flora and seeds.
The chef-curator. James Won — Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole (2024), Chevalier de l’Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne (2019), Krug Ambassade Chef (first Malaysian), Gaggenau Culinary Spokesperson (first Malaysian). The kitchen’s twelve years of restaurant practice across French classical, Lyonnaise bouchon, Japanese yōshoku, and Mortlach-anchored steakhouse registers — closed in 2025 and converted, deliberately, into the cultural-diplomacy work the Serumpun cornerstone holds.
The cuisine. Sarawak indigenous gastronomy carried at the register the thirty-four communities deserve. Not ethnographic exhibition. Not regional accent on a national menu. Living cultural practice, transcribed by the kitchen — the chef does not invent; the chef listens, transcribes, plates, and steps back — and presented on the international stage at the standard the work asks for.
How the Five Sub-Pages Read Together
The five Serumpun sub-pages do not stand alone. They are bound together by an editorial spine that runs beneath all of them.
The Launch opens the cycle with state backing and UNESCO alignment.
Expo 2025 Osaka carries the cuisine to the international stage — the cuisine moved.
Mulu returns the cuisine to the rainforest that grew it — the cuisine returned.
The Kuching Finale closes the cycle in the city that first carried it.
In Motion runs beneath all four, carrying the work forward through the next generation.
The matched pair that anchors the wider arc — the cuisine moved and the cuisine returned — is the spine. Osaka and Mulu are not two chapters; they are the two registers in which the same cuisine is read. International debut and homecoming. The world stage and the ancestral land. Both are real; neither displaces the other; the founding year only works because both were attempted.
The In Motion thread is the discipline that carries the spine forward. The four chapters are public; the thread is generational. Both are real; neither replaces the other.
What Carries Forward — Year Two and Beyond
The Kuching Finale closes the founding-year arc. It does not close the movement. After April 2026, the Serumpun work enters its second year — the post-founding register. The In Motion mentee thread continues. The Sarawak State Government and Sarawak Tourism Board partnerships continue. The UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy — Kuching alignment continues. The cultural-diplomacy register that the founding year established remains the operating discipline.
The kitchen learned, across the founding year, that the cuisine could move and return. The years that follow will test what the founding year proved.
Adjacent chapters
The chef-curator and the wider operating philosophy
The twelve years of restaurant practice, the two French-state honours, and the 2025 pivot that the Serumpun work expresses.
Restaurant LegacyThe twelve-year arc that earned Sarawak's confidence
Without the rooms, the State Government's confidence in the chef-curator is not earned.
CollaborationsThe institutional architecture
The Sarawak State Government, Sarawak Tourism Board, and UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy — Kuching at fullest register.
*Serumpun is a Bahasa Malaysia word. Of the same root, of one cluster. The thirty-four indigenous communities of Sarawak share a body of cultural practice that grew from a single rainforest. The movement is the work that places that practice on the formal cultural record — and the kitchen has tried, across four chapters and one parallel thread, to honour what the communities have always carried.*