The Mentee Programme

Serumpun Sarawak does not exist to perform. It exists to pass forward. The In Motion mentee programme is the part of the work that says so out loud — three Sarawakian practitioners who travel inside every chapter, learn at the pass, and begin to carry the cuisine and its conservation discipline on their own terms.

Why the programme exists

A conservation movement that cannot outlive its founder has failed its purpose. The mentee programme is the mechanism that gives the cuisine and its conservation discipline a life beyond any single chef’s career. It is not an outreach add-on. It is the means by which Serumpun 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. Each was selected through the same disciplined process; each is held to the same standard; each carries a different temperament and a different ground.

The mentees

Chef Robbie Balcarek

The youngest of the three, and the one with the most ahead of him. Robbie has not yet held a professional kitchen of his own — the programme is the bridge from the competitions he has already won to the fine-dining standard the platform is working at. Double gold medallist at the Malaysia Culinary World Cup 2025. Present in Mulu in October 2025, when the cuisine returned to Gunung Mulu and the indigenous communities of the Baram. On stage at the Finale, on pass for the rainforest activations, in the field for foraging with elders. The technical hand — quiet, fast, clean.

I selected Robbie because the technique was already there. The honour of the programme is not to make him a chef — he is on his way without us. The honour is to widen the ground the technique is set against, and to put the indigenous knowledge of his own home into his cooking before someone else’s voice does.

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 sits where cuisine meets cultural validation. Her CHASS work runs alongside her cooking — on pass at Mulu, in the recipe-validation conversations with Datin Sri Dona Drury-Wee, in the field for ingredient identification with the communities whose knowledge anchors the menu. Her Bahasa Malaysia and her Iban heritage are her ground; contemporary cuisine is the language she carries them in.

She holds standing positions across Sarawak’s culinary institutions. Assistant Secretary of the Kuching Chefs Association for the 2025–2027 term, having earlier held the Director of Membership role. Her industry collaborations include MAGGI’s festive campaigns — most recently the Gawai Dayak programme, where her recipes blend traditional Sarawakian flavours with the everyday accessibility the brand reaches. Her culinary specialism is the protection of lesser-known indigenous dishes — tumpik, the Melanau sago pancake; traditional ayam pansuh, meat slow-cooked in bamboo. She has carried Sarawakian gastronomy internationally to Macao and to Japan, and she serves as a technical advisor through the SAGO Incubator initiative for local entrepreneurs.

I selected Laura because her CHASS standing is the platform’s permanent connection to the cultural authority of the work, and because her cooking already carries the Iban and Melanau ground at the level the cuisine asks for. She is the senior practitioner 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: buah kulim (jungle garlic), engkabang (illipe nut), tepus (wild ginger). The discipline is shaped by his Peranakan heritage and by the kitchen he learned in alongside his grandmother.

His professional foundation is Shangri-La Kuala Lumpur and Shangri-La Singapore — the institutional grounding that runs underneath the Sarawak work. He has represented Sarawakian cuisine at platforms including the Kita Food Festival, in collaboration with chefs of Anthony Yeoh’s standing. His sourcing discipline is direct — Bidayuh and Iban communities, traditional food stories preserved through his kitchen. Present at the Kuching Finale in April 2026.

I selected John because he is already doing on his own restaurant floor what the platform is trying to teach. His foraging is his own. His indigenous-sourcing relationships predate Serumpun. The honour of the programme for John is not instruction — it is alignment, and the public ground a wider cultural-diplomacy platform gives to the cooking he was already doing in private.

How they were chosen

The selection in 2024 began wider than the final three. More than thirty practitioners applied; twelve were shortlisted through technical and cultural interview by Culinary Heritage and Arts Society Sarawak (CHASS), led by Datin Sri Dona Drury-Wee. Eight were invited to live kitchen assessment and to a one-to-one conversation with me. The cohort that emerged was selected on four grounds — passion and discipline; availability for the demands of the programme; 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 is a workshop, not a mentorship.

How the mentorship runs

The work is hands-on and one-to-one. There is no curriculum manual. The pace is set per mentee, but the structure beneath it is consistent.

Kitchen-side coaching. Daily blocks at the pass — mise-en-place discipline, heat control, reduction and infusion, plating timing. The corrections happen as the cuisine is being cooked, not afterwards.

Plate-by-plate review. Each finished plate is read against four checks — flavour architecture, temperature, texture, visual narrative. The corrections are written down and returned the next service.

Weekly one-to-one. Ninety minutes set aside for goals, discipline, resilience, and the conversation a young chef cannot have with a peer. Career arc, not technique.

Field immersion. Foraging practicums with the elders of the indigenous communities the wider movement is in conversation with. Identification, ethical harvest, preservation. The forest is the senior teacher in this part of the work.

On-camera and panel practice. Drills, simulations, the three-minute ingredient pitch. Sarawak’s young chefs will be asked to speak about their cuisine in public; the programme prepares them to do so with composure.

Grooming and presence. Stance, diction, media poise. Held at the standard of the maisons that have hosted the wider work.

Menu engineering. Costing, sustainable sourcing, supply-chain mapping for indigenous produce. The cuisine has to make sense as a business as well as a ceremony.

Plating and photography. Joint sessions with Canon Master Bonnie Yap — light, angles, the considered photograph. The image of the cuisine is not an afterthought.

What the mentees showed in 2025 – 2026

The three travelled inside the four founding-year chapters and the parallel events.

Osaka, August 2025. The mentees rotated through station lead and commis duty at the Seaside Studio CASO debut. Bilingual menu cards and ingredient narratives carried in their voice as well as mine, with KOL and ASEAN media in the room.

Le Méridien Petaling Jaya, September 2025. A Merdeka residency under Marriott — a dried river fish consommé, river prawns, manuk pansuh, Bario rice, Sarawak laksa, and a native-herb degustation. Cultural validation throughout from Chef Laura Sim Bara and CHASS. Daily pre-service brief, cut inspection at the pass, and post-service debrief held to first-class standard.

Mulu, October 2025. Chef Robbie Balcarek and Chef Laura Sim Bara on stage in the rainforest activations within Gunung Mulu National Park. Foraging with the Baram communities. Contemporary French and Japanese discipline laid alongside the indigenous ground that taught the dish.

Kuching Finale, April 2026. Chef John Lim present as the cohort returned to Sarawak Cultural Village for the closing chapter of the founding year. The cycle held. The continuity stood.

Conservation as the spine

The mentee work is not a culinary residency with a conservation label attached. The conservation discipline is the spine.

The Indigenous Ingredient Codex began in 2024 with the first thirty entries — midin, empurau, litsea, engkabang, terung asam, bunga kantan, and the others the foragers and seed-keepers chose to share. The codex grows as the field work grows; entries are added only when the ethnobotanical, culinary, and ethical conditions are all in place. The Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of the indigenous communities anchors every entry.

The mentees inherit the codex as part of the discipline. They are taught to cook against it, not from a separately curated pantry.

What the programme is not

It is not a marketing instrument. The mentees are not used as cultural correspondents for productions outside the discipline. They are not asked to perform their heritage. The work is the work.

It is not a one-way scholarship. The mentees teach the wider movement at least as much as they are taught. The Bahasa Malaysia, the Iban ground, the Bidayuh and Penan and Kenyah lineages that come into the cuisine with them are part of how that cuisine continues to be written — not a folkloric add-on.

It is not the sole business of the founder. The programme is structured so the cohort can continue without my visibility. That is the test of whether the discipline has held.

The long view

The next mentee will be selected when the work needs them, not when a calendar suggests it should. The cohort stays small on purpose. Three travelling inside the chapters will produce a discipline that endures longer than thirty passing through workshops.

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