On the set of "Hundred ChefsBattle" (Bai Chu Da Zhan ), "Treasure Chef" (as he is called on the show) Tenzin Jampa is the only Tibetan chef.

He has a medium build and wears a Tibetan-style chef's uniform. Hand-forged Tibetan kitchenware islaid out on his cutting board, and beside him stands a four-tier painted wooden chest, each tier filled with different spices.

These spices were collected by Tenzin Jampa from across Xizang—Tibetan angelica, Tibetan mint, wild Tibetan scallions that grow at an altitude of 4,000 meters. Each has been carefully preserved. Tenzin Jampa calls them all "Himalayan spices."

The judges crowd in, pick up the spices, and sniff them. The grassy, pungent aroma fills their noses. For the first time, they realize that hidden in the mountains and wilds of the Himalayas is an entire world of flavors they have never encountered.

Many of Tenzin Jampa's elders made their living at the stove. His grandfather was a chef at Drepung Monastery; even with few ingredients on hand, he could make ordinary things taste delicious. His uncle was a chef at the Lhasa Hotel.

Because his father drank heavily, his parents divorced, and his mother moved with Tenzin Jampa into a rented room. She had to work even harder and rush around, and the meals on the table gradually became simpler.

Tenzin Jampa began hanging out in internet cafes and playing games, the air thick with the smell of smoke and instant noodles. His uncle, a chef at the Lhasa Hotel, couldn't stand to see it and told him, "Go to Beijing. The Makye Ame there is recruiting apprentices. Go broaden your horizons and learn a trade."

So in 2008, at the age of 17, Tenzin Jampa took a train to Beijing alone.

In Xizang, cooks are called "Majin," and sometimes, out of respect, are called "Majin La." But Tenzin Jampa always felt that no matter how politely people said that "La", he was still just a cook. That idea began to change a few months after he arrived in Beijing.

At Makye Ame, there was an instructor from Lhasa named Norbu, who scolded people mercilessly but taught without holding anything back. One day during a break, Tenzin Jampa saw him sitting in a corner flipping through a magazine and wondered—why would a chef read a magazine?

Tenzin Jampa ran his fingers over the smooth paper. For the first time, he realized that a chef was not just someone who filled people's stomachs. A chef could also be creative, could have his own form of expression, and this was a career worth pursuing with everything he had.

After that, Tenzin Jampa seemed like a different person. Knife skills, heat control, and seasoning—he learned them one by one under senior chefs. To keep a close eye on the temperature of barley wine and yogurt, he even slept beside the fermentation jars several times. Later, he returned to Lhasa to improvehis Tibetan cooking skills, learned how to debone a lamb leg from a Mongolian chef, and studied baking with the first cake maker in Xizang.

But he gradually discovered that being a good head chef at a restaurant and making a good meal were not the same thing. Beyond the stove, many small things he had once thought unimportant were actually major matters in running a restaurant.

One day, Tenzin Jampa's gaze fell on an old Tibetan cabinet in the corner.

It was the cabinet his grandfather had used, its edges worn smooth and shiny, with compartments reserved for spices. Tenzin Jampa remembered that when he was little, before cooking, his grandfather would slowly pull open a drawer, take out the spices, grind them carefully, and pinch them into the pot.

After his grandfather passed away, Tenzin Jampa inherited the cabinet and a notebook—his grandfather's own handwritten notes on spices: which spice paired with which dish, where it grew, in which month it was harvested, what benefits it had... line after line, densely written.

As he flipped through the notebook, he suddenly wanted to see the places where those flavors grew.

In the autumn of 2023, Tenzin Jampa began traveling into the mountains. From the valleys of Gyirong to the Legbo Valley in Cona to the borderlands of Medog, he traveled from one place to another. Everywhere he went, he asked locals, recorded ancient recipes, and added to his grandfather's notes. He began collecting spices. Some villagers dried them and mailed them to him; for the rest, he made the trip himself, sitting down over a bowl of butter tea and listening to elders talk about which grass grew on which slope and when a flower was at its most fragrant for picking.

He would also go deep into the forests, smelling and identifying each plant one by one.

Tenzin Jampa gradually came to understand that Tibetan cuisine is rooted in this land. In two years, more than 320 kinds of Himalayan spices, along with his name, gradually spread through the culinary world. More and more people realized that Tibetan cuisine was never just butter tea and yak meat.

When he took part in "Hundred ChefsBattle," Tenzin Jampa deliberately chose the most renowned "Michelin Hunter", Andrea. He knew he could not win, but he wanted to seize this opportunity to show the world's top chefs these ancient flavors from the Himalayas.

Reporter: Migmar, Yudron, Namchentso, Tenzin Yangla

Translator: Ni Weijing

First Review: Liu Fang

Second Review: Drakpa Wangchen

Third Review: Hu Rongguo