Nambie Marak puts Garo food on Chennai’s table

If your idea of Northeast Indian food begins and ends with meat and chilli, Nambie Marak has a few things to add to the conversation. The Garo chef, better known as The Tribal Chef, has spent years introducing diners to the ingredients, techniques and food traditions that get lost when an entire region is squeezed under one label. She is bringing her interpretation of Meghalayan cuisine to the city this weekend.

In bringing Garo food to Chennai, Nambie Marak is keeping traditions alive

Nambie is from the Garo community, one of Meghalaya's three major tribes alongside the Khasi and the Jaintia, each with distinct ingredients, techniques and food traditions that bear little resemblance to each other, let alone to the generalised idea of Northeast food. As she puts it, “Every community in Meghalaya also has its own way of cooking, so there is so much more to Meghalayan food than the idea that Northeast food is simply about meat and chilli.” Garo cooking uses lye, an alkalising agent made from soaking the ashes of burnt bamboo or banana bark, to soften meat and vegetables. The Khasi tradition has jadoh, rice cooked with meat, and its own particular vocabulary of flavour. The Jaintias have smoked fish. And that is only Meghalaya. Across the Northeast as a whole, the diversity runs into hundreds of distinct food traditions across dozens of tribes. Nambie's point, made with quiet insistence, is that none of this is a monolith and all of it deserves to be understood on its own terms.

For Nambie, that diversity is also rooted in the land and the way people have historically cooked with what was available. “We use what grows around us — rice, greens, bamboo shoots, sesame, chillies, herbs, meat, fish — and let those ingredients speak for themselves,” she says. “But simple doesn’t mean bland. There is a lot of depth in the way we use smoke, fermentation, roasting, drying and local herbs.”

The menu she is bringing to Raintree St. Mary's is her personal interpretation: food rooted in how she grew up cooking, the ingredients she wants Chennai to encounter and the techniques she feels most urgently need to be kept alive. The vegetarian thali begins with a Meghalaya ginger and honey drink, followed by momo gujiya and banana flower and potato croquettes. At the table are fresh radish salad, moringa dal, mushroom and pumpkin curry, raw jackfruit with black sesame, mustard greens stir-fry and boiled seasonal vegetables and greens, alongside turmeric rice and bamboo shoot pickle. Dessert brings black sesame ice cream and black rice fritters. “These weren’t just techniques for flavour; traditionally, they were also ways of preserving food,” she says.

That connection to food begins at home for Nambie. She grew up in Shillong, with her mother making sure she stayed connected to their village and roots. “At that age, I didn’t think of it as learning a cuisine — I was simply watching my family cook. Today, when I cook those dishes, I realise how much of my understanding of food actually came from those little moments,” she says.

The First Runner-Up of MasterChef India and Culinary and Cultural Ambassador of Meghalaya, Nambie has been doing this work for years. She is particularly interested in keeping alive the everyday knowledge around seasonal and wild ingredients, much of which was passed down through watching elders rather than written recipes. “I don’t want our food to become something that only exists as a memory or in a museum. I want people to continue cooking it and enjoying it.”

And what she hopes Chennai takes away from the meal is perhaps the simplest part of the invitation: “I hope they leave curious.” If that curiosity extends to Meghalaya, its communities, its ingredients and its way of life, then Nambie will consider the meal a success. “I may not be able to take everyone to Meghalaya, but for a few hours, I can bring a little bit of Meghalaya to their table.”

Rs 2,000 onwards. From 7 pm to 11 pm on September 18 and 19. From 12.30 pm to 3 pm on September 20. At Colony - The Raintree, Alwarpet.

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