Expo 2025 Osaka

The Expo programme listed the cuisine as Borneo French Cuisine. On the plate it was French Borneo: contemporary French rigour, brought to life through Modernist techniques, working with the indigenous knowledge of Borneo’s communities so that neither side gives ground. Both names point to the same plate.

The spine of the menu is Serumpun itself, which means of the same root, of one cluster. One land shown as five terrains, each carried by the Sarawak people who know its ground.

Course I, River, was given to the Penan. Course II, Forest, to the Iban. Course III, Mountain, to the Bidayuh. Course IV, Coast, to the Melanau. Course V, Sea, to the Kayan. The close, Harmony, tied Bornean and Japanese threads together as one farewell.

A note on attribution, written here because it matters more than the menu itself. Pairing each course with a Sarawak people is a custodial tribute. It makes no claim about habitat. Each people is invited to carry a terrain as homage, and that carrying is an act of honour that has nothing to do with where a people lives, farms or hunts. The Kayan are an upriver people, so their carrying the Sea shows most clearly how the device works: the pairing is paid as tribute and assigns no terrain. Habitat custodianship and the stewardship of particular ingredients are separate matters. Each is treated community by community, and we honour it in its own right wherever a course draws on it.

May the forest walk beside you, and the river remember your name.

Each course was anchored to one of Sarawak’s ecological settings, given to its people as a custodial tribute, and cooked to the platform’s discipline.

Three small bites. A dabai and avocado feather tuile dusted with Bario Merah red rice; a cattail of Job’s Tear and tekuyung pasang river snail; a tiger prawn pearl with yuzu, Sarawak white peppercorn and silken tofu. The first exchange between Sarawak and Japan.

Every course was built on one or two Sarawak ingredients that carry the state’s identity, with support from the pantry we sourced in Osaka and from technique where the dish needed it. We were not chasing hyperlocalism. We wanted the right ingredient for each dish, from the closest credible origin that the law and the season allowed.

The buah kulim in the Sea bisque shows the house’s pairing logic most plainly. It is a Borneo nut that gives the earthy, garlic-and-truffle note a European kitchen would go to Périgord for. We used it because it earned its place in the bisque, and never as a substitute for the sake of locality.

The occasion set the frame before any dish did. This was Sarawak’s presence on a world stage, which is a different job from a restaurant service: forty covers an evening for four evenings, and one hard operational fact that shaped everything. We had no access to the pavilion before the event day itself.

So we worked across two sites with one pass. A rented commercial kitchen in Osaka was our commissary in the days before the run. It held everything that could be made ahead and kept: the broths, the confit oil, the gula apong glaze, the bisque base, the pastry, the tebaloi cracker, the pickled terung asam, the kuih pressed overnight under weight. The pavilion was the pass, and only final cooking, assembly and plating crossed to Seaside Studio CASO. Insulated boxes kept the cold chain intact from commissary to pavilion, and on the day a refrigerated vehicle kept the food safe in transit.

Thirty of us travelled: twenty in production and emcee, ten in front of house and support. The kitchen at the pass was a brigade of twelve. Two on fish and broth, two on meat and risotto, two on cold and foam, two on grill and bisque, one on pastry. A garnish lead placed the flowers and final micro-herbs on every plate, an expediter called the pass, and a tableside lead handled the poured courses. Because the stations worked in pairs, nobody carried a course alone, and the expediter and tableside lead had no other duties.

One plating rule ran through every plate, every night. The plate had to be organic, intentional and rooted, with nothing forced, decorative or theatrical. Base, protein, sauce, texture, flowers, wipe, pass. Run clean, every plate identical.

The pantry worked on two levels. Sarawak’s indigenous ingredients (empurau, enkabang oil, Liberica blossom, tempoyak, Ipah Kayuh, gula apong, Bario salt and cinnamon, Litsea cubeba, tekuyung pasang, kesak, ulat tinduh, buah kulim, midin, daun bungkang, dabai) were shipped from Sarawak frozen or vacuum-sealed, under cold chain and customs documentation, with health certification and an ATA Carnet for equipment, in compliance with Japan’s restrictions on fresh meat and plant imports. The villagers of Betong helped collect tekuyung, midin, Job’s Tear and sago grub. We also bought from Sarawak’s local markets, the Tamu Saratok among them, where the ingredients reached us through the same hands that had handled them since they came in from the rivers and the forests.

Perishable produce, dairy, common proteins and pantry staples were bought in Osaka: free-range chicken thigh, venison loin, sashimi-grade swordfish, tiger prawn, silken tofu, avocado, yuzu, green mango, purple yam, coconut, dairy, eggs, warabiko, matcha, and the edible flowers and micro-herbs from the Bentencho florist routes.

Again, the aim was never hyperlocalism. It was the right ingredient for each dish, from the closest credible origin the law and the season allowed.

The empurau is the hero of the River course. It is also where our contingency planning was tested for real.

A tsunami alert fell across the service window. Planes were grounded and the team was kept in the boarding houses for safety. We were already barred from the pavilion before the day, so the empurau, which had travelled chilled, could not be processed when it should have been and had to stay frozen longer than planned. The extra freezing and its heavy ice glaze thinned the flesh and cut the usable yield. The fish fell short of what the dish needed.

We answered in two ways. First, we recovered the usable flesh by binding the thinned fillets with transglutaminase to lift the yield. It is a Modernist technique, used here under pressure and kept inside the canon: empurau bound only to empurau, with the River course’s fish-collagen base left untouched. Second, when a formal re-consignment could not be arranged in time, a senior member of the delegation hand-carried a second consignment in checked cargo, roughly doubling the empurau that reached the service. Behind both sat the safeguard the method exists for. We had written down how the fish is handled, preserved and brought back to a working state, so the team could act at the moment of failure whether or not I was in the room. The course was served to standard on all four nights.

The fault is now a handling rule in the method: over-freezing and glazing cost yield, and handling decides as much as sourcing whether an ingredient survives the distance.

Where consignments lost during the alert could not be recovered, we used Japanese substitutes for those services. It was the only honest option the circumstances allowed, and sometimes the discipline has to bend so the work can go on. Mulu and Kuching, the chapters that followed, were where guests could taste what French Borneo cuisine should be when the land gives us its bounty and its vitality and fertility are left intact. Osaka bent under the tsunami. In Mulu and Kuching we cooked at full standard.

Professor Gerard Bodeker, the platform’s scientific advisor, narrated each course on stage. We framed it deliberately as culinary anthropology and kept theatre out of it. Where a community’s knowledge sat behind a dish, he named that knowledge. Where an ingredient had a medicinal lineage, he set it on a clear scientific footing the room could follow.

The narration followed the principle the work starts from. Knowledge passed down through elders, foragers and household kitchens deserves the same scholarly weight that a French sauce or a Japanese kaiseki technique already has.

The Osaka programme ran under formal veterinary authorisation from the State of Sarawak. The Sarawak Tourism Board was the registered exporter and Atlas Collective Sdn. Bhd. the importer of record. Frozen state-certified ingredients (Empurau, Tekuyung pasang, Midin, Paku fern) were shipped across two regulated legs under the Veterinary Public Health Ordinance 1999 of Sarawak [Cap. 32], Section 84(b), in line with the International Aquatic Animal Health Code published by the International Office of Epizootic, an agency of the World Health Organization.

The paperwork rests on two forms, both issued at Kuching on 4 July 2025 by the State Veterinary Authority Sarawak:

• Permit to Export, Form B, Veterinary Public Health Ordinance 1999: empurau, fifty units, exit port Kuching, valid sixty days.
• Certificate of Health for Animal and Fish, Form C, Section 84(b): live empurau certified free of clinical disease.

The certificate states on its face that the goods were destined for the Serumpun cultural programme held in Osaka, Japan. It is a small detail. A cultural-diplomacy mission done properly is made of details like it.

Serumpun Sarawak went to Osaka within a formal partnership, and we owe each party.

The Culinary Heritage and Arts Society Sarawak (CHASS) led the fieldwork and heritage research, and checked the recipes, the narrations and the menu language against a standard the communities themselves recognise as faithful. The Ministry of Tourism, Creative Industry and Performing Arts Sarawak (MTCP) mandated the programme and had its own heritage office vet the materials. The Sarawak Tourism Board and the Sarawak Biodiversity Centre gave institutional and scientific support. The Borneo Cultural Museum and Atlas Collective supported the cultural and creative record. Professor Gerard Bodeker, the platform’s scientific advisor, framed the work and narrated it on stage in Osaka. The endorsement of UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Kuching, formalised in March 2026, recognised the conservation purpose the programme exists for.

Bonnie Yap photographed the Osaka service. Atlas Collective produced the chapter film and the four-day Stories highlight on the Serumpun Sarawak Instagram channel.

The platform passed the test its founding year set. Two complete traditions were cooked together at full strength, neither compromised, on an international stage, with a scientific authority giving the medicinal claims their proper weight.

The cuisine moved, and we kept to the standard. Mulu came next.