The mentee programme

Serumpun Sarawak exists to pass the cuisine on. The In Motion mentee programme is where that purpose is easiest to see: three Sarawakian chefs who travel with every chapter, learn at the pass, and start to carry the cuisine and its care for the land in their own way.

Why the programme exists

A conservation movement that ends with its founder has failed. The mentee programme is how the cuisine, and the conservation work that comes with it, outlives any one chef’s career. It sits at the centre of Serumpun. It is how the work stays in motion when I am no longer at the pass.

Three mentees travel with the programme today: Chef Robbie Balcarek, Chef Laura Sim Bara and Chef John Lim. All three came through the same selection and are held to the same standard, and each brings a different temperament and a different home ground.

The mentees

Chef Robbie Balcarek

Robbie is the youngest of the three, with the most ahead of him. He has not yet run a professional kitchen of his own, and the programme is his bridge from the competitions he has already won to the fine-dining standard we work at. He took double gold at the Malaysia Culinary World Cup 2025. He was in Mulu in October 2025, when the cuisine went back to Gunung Mulu and the indigenous communities of the Baram. He was on stage at the Finale, on the pass for the rainforest activations and out foraging with the elders. His hands are quiet, fast and clean.

I chose Robbie because the technique was already there. He is becoming a chef with or without us. What the programme can give him is a wider ground for that technique, and the indigenous knowledge of his own home in his cooking before someone else’s voice gets there first.

It is an honour to learn from someone of his calibre and vision. This experience reminds me that our roots are not limitations, they are our greatest strength.

Ia satu penghormatan untuk belajar daripada seorang ‘sifu’ yang berkaliber dan berwawasan; pengalaman ini mengingatkan saya bahawa akar umbi kita bukan batasan, sebaliknya ia adalah kekuatan terbesar kita. Chef Robbie Balcarek · Sarawak Tribune, October 2025

Chef Laura Sim Bara

Laura works where cooking meets cultural validation. Her CHASS work runs beside her cooking: on the pass at Mulu, in the recipe-validation conversations with Datin’ Sri Dona Drury-Wee, and in the field identifying ingredients with the communities whose knowledge the menu rests on. Bahasa Malaysia and her Iban heritage are her home ground, and contemporary cuisine is how she carries them.

She holds standing roles across Sarawak’s culinary institutions. She is Assistant Secretary of the Kuching Chefs Association for the 2025 to 2027 term, and earlier held the Director of Membership role. Her industry work includes MAGGI’s festive campaigns, most recently for Gawai Dayak, where her recipes put traditional Sarawakian flavours into everyday home cooking. Her speciality is protecting lesser-known indigenous dishes: tumpik, the Melanau sago pancake, and traditional ayam pansuh, meat slow-cooked in bamboo. She has taken Sarawakian food to Macao and to Japan, and she is a technical advisor to local entrepreneurs through the SAGO Incubator initiative.

I chose Laura because her standing in CHASS gives the programme a permanent link to the cultural authority of this work, and because her cooking already carries Iban and Melanau food at the level the cuisine asks for. She is the most senior of the three.

Chef John Lim

John Lim Hsien Loong is the Executive Chef and Founder of Roots by Food Journal, in the historic Old Court House in Kuching. His cuisine reads as Bornean-Mediterranean: European technique applied to indigenous Bornean ingredients he often forages himself, such as buah kulim (jungle garlic), engkabang (illipe nut) and tepus (wild ginger). His cooking is shaped by his Peranakan heritage and by the kitchen where he learned beside his grandmother.

He trained at Shangri-La Kuala Lumpur and Shangri-La Singapore, and that hotel grounding sits under everything he does in Sarawak. He has represented Sarawakian cuisine at events including the Kita Food Festival, cooking alongside chefs of Anthony Yeoh’s standing. He sources directly from Bidayuh and Iban communities and keeps their food stories alive in his kitchen. He was at the Kuching Finale in April 2026.

I chose John because he was already doing in his own restaurant what the programme sets out to teach. His foraging is his own, and his relationships with indigenous suppliers go back further than Serumpun. For John, the programme is less about instruction and more about shared purpose, and about giving the cooking he was already doing quietly a public platform in cultural diplomacy.

How they were chosen

The 2024 selection started much wider than three. More than thirty chefs applied. The Culinary Heritage and Arts Society Sarawak (CHASS), led by Datin’ Sri Dona Drury-Wee, shortlisted twelve through technical and cultural interviews. Eight were invited to a live kitchen assessment and a one-to-one conversation with me. We chose the final cohort on four grounds: passion and discipline; the availability the programme demands; Sarawakian or indigenous heritage where it could be honoured; and at least five years of professional kitchen experience.

The list is small on purpose. Three is enough to teach properly. Thirty would be a workshop.

How the mentorship runs

The work is hands-on and one-to-one. There is no curriculum manual. The pace is set for each mentee, but the structure underneath is the same for all three.

Kitchen coaching. Daily blocks at the pass covering mise en place, heat control, reduction and infusion, and plating timing. Corrections happen while the food is being cooked, never afterwards.

Plate-by-plate review. Every finished plate is checked for flavour structure, temperature, texture and how it looks. The notes are written down and handed back before the next service.

Weekly one-to-one. Ninety minutes for goals, discipline, resilience and the conversations a young chef cannot have with a peer. This hour is about the career more than the technique.

Field immersion. Foraging with the elders of the indigenous communities the movement works with: identifying plants, harvesting them ethically and preserving them. Here the forest is the senior teacher.

On-camera and panel practice. Drills, mock panels and the three-minute ingredient pitch. Sarawak’s young chefs will be asked to speak about their food in public, and the programme prepares them to do it calmly.

Grooming and presence. How to stand, how to speak, how to handle the press, to the standard of the maisons that have hosted the wider work.

Menu engineering. Costing, sustainable sourcing and supply chains for indigenous produce. The cuisine has to work as a business as well as a ceremony.

Plating and photography. Joint sessions with Canon Master Bonnie Yap on light, angles and the considered photograph. How the food looks in a picture matters too.

What the mentees showed in 2025 and 2026

The three travelled with the four founding-year chapters and the events that ran alongside them.

Osaka, August 2025. At the Seaside Studio CASO debut, the mentees rotated between station lead and commis. The bilingual menu cards and ingredient stories were in their voice as well as mine, with KOL and ASEAN media in the room.

Le Méridien Petaling Jaya, September 2025. A Merdeka residency with Marriott: a dried river fish consommé, river prawns, manuk pansuh, Bario rice, Sarawak laksa and a native-herb degustation. Chef Laura Sim Bara and CHASS validated the cultural side throughout. Every day had a pre-service brief, cut inspection at the pass and a post-service debrief, run to the standard of a first-class kitchen.

Mulu, October 2025. Chef Robbie Balcarek and Chef Laura Sim Bara were on stage at the rainforest activations inside Gunung Mulu National Park, and foraged with the Baram communities. French and Japanese technique sat beside the indigenous knowledge that taught each dish.

Kuching Finale, April 2026. Chef John Lim was there as the cohort went back to Sarawak Cultural Village for the last chapter of the founding year, and the cycle held.

Conservation at the centre

Conservation is the core of the mentee work. It was never a label added to a cooking residency.

The Indigenous Ingredient Codex began in 2024 with its first thirty entries: midin, empurau, litsea, engkabang, terung asam, bunga kantan and the others the foragers and seed-keepers chose to share. It grows as the fieldwork grows, and an entry goes in only when the ethnobotanical, culinary and ethical conditions are all met. Every entry rests on the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of the indigenous communities.

The mentees inherit the codex as part of their training, and they cook from it. There is no separate pantry curated for them.

What the programme will not do

We do not use the mentees for marketing. They are not sent out as cultural correspondents for productions outside this work, and they are never asked to perform their heritage.

The learning runs both ways. The mentees teach the wider movement at least as much as we teach them. The Bahasa Malaysia, the Iban home ground and the Bidayuh, Penan and Kenyah lineages they bring with them are part of how the cuisine keeps being written.

The programme does not depend on me. It is built so the cohort can carry on when I am out of sight, and that is the real test of whether it has worked.

The long view

We will choose the next mentee when the work needs one, whatever the calendar says. The cohort stays small on purpose. Three people travelling with the chapters will build something that lasts longer than thirty passing through workshops.

The forest does not measure itself in cohort sizes. Neither does the cuisine.