About The Gastrographer

Like Black Pepper, my origins lie in Kerala, in the deep south of India, a land that has sat at the very source of the ancient spice trade, a living crossroads of civilisation for more than five thousand years. Kerala was never merely a place of origin; it was a destination. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Venetians, Arabs, East Africans, Turks, Jews, Chinese, Indonesians and South East Asians all came to trade here, drawn to the port of Kochi (ancient Muziris as noted in the Bible), one of the great emporiums of the ancient world, where the world met, argued, fell in love, and sat down to eat together. From 1500 AD, Europeans arrived by sea: Portuguese, Dutch, French, English and Danes, each leaving their mark on the architecture, the language, and above all, the food.

But the exchange was never one-sided. In equal measure, Kerala sent itself out into the world. Black pepper (worth its weight in gold in ancient Rome, used to pay ransoms and taxes) travelled west and quietly transformed European cooking forever. Cardamom found its way into Arabic coffee and Scandinavian baking. Ginger into medieval European cuisine. Kerala's spices turned up in Moroccan tagines, Malay and Indonesian curries, English Christmas puddings, and Persian rice dishes. The hands that loaded those ships in Kochi had no idea they were seasoning kitchens on the other side of the world for centuries to come. This is what food does: it travels, it adapts, it leaves its fingerprints on everything it touches.

Long before any of those traders arrived, Kerala had already become something quite remarkable: a place where Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Jain and Buddhist communities lived in peace and harmony for millennia, sharing meals across every threshold. A place known for its strong secular integration. Food, it turns out, has always been humanity's oldest diplomacy and a means of bringing people together.

It was at those tables, in the spice markets I walked as a child, in the kitchens of my family, my aunties and uncles, the neighbours whose traditions differed from my own, that my passion for food was born, alongside a deep curiosity about history, geography, linguistics, culture, and travel. Not as academic subjects, but as living traditions. Food tasted, smelled and passed between hands. I learned early that the best stories are always shared over a meal.

I was raised in the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats of Kerala, on a tea plantation, and later between an unconventional school campus in the lush lower lands of Kerala and New Delhi in the North of India. A love of storytelling eventually drew me into film production, and that career took me around the world, where I lived for long periods in different cultural environments, savouring the local culture and cuisine at every stop. That fascination followed me across oceans.

Today I am a resident of New York City: another great port, another crossroads, where the cuisines of the entire world jostle for space and every borough is its own spice route. From a Yemeni kitchen in Bay Ridge to hand-pulled noodles in Flushing, the city is a daily reminder that food is how cultures say hello, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than cooking a fine meal and gathering people around a table to prove it.

That wonder and passion, sensory, historical, deeply personal, is what built this site. A career in design, visual effects and technology gave me the means to bring it to life; a lifetime at diverse tables gave me every reason to. Food as story. Food as welcome. Food as celebration, pleasure and seduction. Every month, new ingredients, journey points and recipes will be added. Come back often and join me on the culinary journeys that, in ways we rarely stop to consider, have made each of us who we are today.

The Monthly Dispatch

New ingredients, journeys, and recipes arrive every month. Leave your address and I shall write when they do.