International Debut

The chapter is editorially significant for what it demonstrated: that the Serumpun work was not a domestic state-cultural programme dressed up for international press, but a body of work robust enough to land in the most demanding gastronomic market in the world — Japan, in the year of its World Expo, with a Sarawak indigenous cuisine the city of Osaka had not previously met. Bernama, the national wire, carried the chapter on 9 August 2025 with the editorial line that has held across the wider arc.

Seaside Studio CASO — The Venue

The chapter was staged at Seaside Studio CASO in Osaka — a Japanese cultural venue with the architectural register required to host an indigenous-cuisine programme without flattening it into thematic decoration. The siting was deliberate. CASO’s industrial-creative format honoured the Sarawak material’s gravity; the location placed Serumpun in cultural conversation with Expo 2025’s wider register without competing with it.

Sarawak Tribune carried the launch coverage on 9 August 2025 under Serumpun Sarawak Makes International Debut In Japan. The Borneo Post followed on 10 August 2025 with Serumpun Sarawak Showcases Indigenous Heritage, Cuisine and Culture in International Debut in Osaka — a piece whose editorial framing supplied one of the chapter’s defining single phrases.

A narrative in motion.

The Borneo Post · 10 August 2025

What the Chapter Argued

The Osaka chapter’s editorial argument was, in essence, a question of register. Could indigenous Sarawak cuisine — Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu, and the wider thirty-four indigenous communities — hold cultural ground in a city whose own gastronomic confidence is among the highest on earth? The answer the chapter delivered was yes, when the storytelling carries the cuisine.

The Bernama framing — blending Sarawak’s ancestral heritage with contemporary storytelling — captures the operating principle. The kitchen did not present indigenous Sarawak material as ethnographic exhibition. It presented it as living craft, with a narrative discipline tuned to a Japanese audience that knew exactly what living craft required to honour. The pairing of register was the chapter’s argument.

The Borneo Post’s narrative in motion phrasing carried the same point in a different key. The cuisine arrived in Osaka not as a static ethnographic catalogue but as a moving story — heritage held in the present tense, served at the table, leaving with the diner.

The Menu — Six Courses, Five Biomes, One Harmony

The Osaka menu was conceived as a journey through Sarawak’s landscape — River, Forest, Mountain, Coast, Sea — closing in Harmony. Each course honoured a biome, an indigenous community whose cuisine that biome carried, and a paired Japanese sensibility expressed in technique or finishing register. Heritage held in the present tense; living craft, not ethnographic catalogue.

Amuse-Bouche — Of Sea, Forest, and Friendship

A trio of bite-sized creations — dabai and avocado, Bario Merah feather; Job’s Tear, Tekuyung Pasang (river snails), cattails; tiger prawn pearl, yuzu and Sarawak white peppercorn, silken tofu. Sarawak’s heritage and Japanese inspiration introduced together at the table.

Course I — River

Empurau, engkabang nut and Liberica blossoms, snail glace, sago and beras, ulam oil, Sarawak black peppercorn.

The Emperor of River Fish, confit in nutty engkabang with floral Liberica blossom oil, finished with a crusting of sago and hill rice; resting in the collagen broth of the Empurau’s bones and scales, fortified with snail glace and wild herb oil. A serene opening — Sarawak’s rivers in every velvety sip.

Course II — Forest

Binchotan-roasted chicken, Bario cinnamon, gula apong, ipah kayuh, cassava leaf and tempoyak crème.

Forest-roasted over Binchotan charcoal; glazed with gula apong, Bario cinnamon, and ipah kayuh — the wild leaf that elevates umami — with slow-cooked cassava leaf and tempoyak (fermented durian) crème. Jungle smoke; ferment; tradition.

Course III — Mountain

Aged venison, Litsea and Bario salt crust, Bario rice grains, tepus, upa pantu (heart of palm), pickled eggplant, bracken and midin.

Aged venison crusted in Litsea and Bario salt; resting on a terroir of three-coloured Bario rice risotto, slowly infused with the essence of Manok Pansuh broth; garnished with julienned tepus (wild ginger), Liberica coffee and tuak broth, pickled wild eggplant, and crunchy jungle ferns. A tribute to Sarawak’s highlands.

Course IV — Coast

Swordfish umai ceviche, kesak (weaver ants) coconut soufflé, ulat tinduh (sago worm), tebaloi (sago cracker), and pearls.

A coastal melody — swordfish ceviche cured in green mango, lime, shallots, and chilli pickles; resting on weaver-ants coconut soufflé and black tebaloi cracker; with an optional roasted sago worm.

Course V — Sea

Deep-sea tiger prawn, ginger torch, daun bungkang, prawn tomalley and buah kulim bisque, yam gnocchi.

Prawn tail marinated in ginger torch, wrapped in daun bungkang over the tender heat of the longhouse hearth — where stories are told and shared. Smoky yam gnocchi, enveloped in the umami of prawn tomalley and buah kulim bisque.

Course VI — Harmony

Black rice kuih tai tai, matcha warabi mochi, coconut sorbet, soy caramel sablé.

A fusion finale. Peranakan black-rice kuih, pounded and compressed overnight; matcha warabi mochi made from bracken flour for textural counterpoint; coconut sorbet, soy caramel sablé, and pandan cream. A sweet farewell to Osaka while Mulu’s warm embrace waits at the next chapter.

Indigenous Ingredients at the Table

The Osaka menu carried Sarawak’s biodiverse pantry to the international stage — many of the ingredients meeting their international audience for the first time. Bario Merah (the highland heirloom red rice), engkabang (illipe nut and oil), gula apong (smoky-sweet palm sugar), tempoyak (fermented durian), tuak (rice wine), Liberica coffee blossoms, Empurau (the Emperor of River Fish), buah kulim (jungle garlic), ipah kayuh, midin (jungle fern), upa pantu (heart of palm), tekuyung pasang (river snails), kesak (weaver ants), ulat tinduh (sago worm), tebaloi (sago cracker), daun bungkang, dabai — each ingredient carrying a community, a biome, and a register the kitchen has been honoured to transcribe.

The accompanying narration — by Professor Gerard Bodeker of Oxford, on the medicinal value of rainforest ingredients — placed the cuisine within the wider conservation register the UNESCO endorsement would later recognise.

Tied to Expo 2025

The Osaka chapter was timed deliberately to coincide with World Expo 2025 — the global exhibition that brought delegations and audiences from across the world to the city. Daily Express’s earlier launch coverage (12 July 2025) had named the alignment explicitly: Unveiling Global Showcases in Osaka August 2025. The chapter was not opportunistic timing. It was scheduled to be present where the world was.

Whether each Expo 2025 visitor crossed paths with Seaside Studio CASO is a separate question. The point of the alignment was that Sarawak made the choice to be there.

What Carried Forward

After the Osaka chapter, the Serumpun architecture moved next to Mulu in October 2025 — the rainforest activations that took the cuisine out of urban venues entirely and returned it to the World Heritage landscape that grew it. The contrast between the two chapters is itself the editorial argument of the wider arc: Osaka in its industrial-creative venue, Mulu in its rainforest. The same cuisine, in two cultural registers, in three months.

The chapter that follows Osaka does not lessen Osaka. It complicates it — and through that complication, deepens it.