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The that one dish. spotlight is a column that connects us with amazing AAPI writers, artists, chefs, creators, and entrepreneurs who talk about the “one dish” that best captures their experiences living at the intersection of multiple cultures. Everyone’s got “that one dish” that provokes a certain emotion, becomes a staple they lean on in the ups and downs of life, or immediately transports them to a formative time, Anton Ego-style. Our personal experiences continue to show how food and the five senses involved with both making and enjoying it evoke vivid memories that serve as meaningful links to the past. You can check out TOD’s archive of past interviews here.

There’s a kind of magic that happens in fermentation, a sweet and slow transformation that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. Vegetables take on new dimensions by becoming sharper, brighter, and more astringent. Fruits soften and take on depth—with sweetness giving way to tang, and flesh turning tender. Flavors deepen in complexity overall. This kind of magic, though, isn’t theatrical or called forth by the wave of a wand and a “bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.” It’s quiet, patient, and built on trust. It’s in microbes, in timing, in your own hands. Kenji Morimoto thrives in this space: part writer, part content creator, and—in his own understated way—part magician.

For Kenji, who grew up as a fourth generation Japanese American, fermentation is so much more than a culinary technique. It’s a way of looking inward and reckoning with distance—from the homeland, the language, as well as the rituals and ingredients that shaped his family’s lives. Fermentation became a gateway to not just the foods of his heritage, but to a deeper understanding of what it means to carry that heritage forward. His debut cookbook “Ferment” is out now, and it’s a thorough chronicle of everything you need to do your own fermentation at home—whether it’s pickles, miso, kombucha, or any kind of cheong under the sun. This week’s dispatch is a conversation with him on the Japanese American experience, growing up in Chicago, and on community-building with fermentation.

As always, paid subscribers are getting an additional dispatch this Friday with some bonus Q&As 💌. (If you’ve been loving “That One Dish” and are interested in supporting this one-woman operation—you know what to do!) Next week, we’ll be featuring a couple recipes from “Ferment,” so do look out for that.

Without further ado, here’s me and Kenji:

You’re a fourth generation Japanese American who grew up in Chicago and now lives in London? How has the idea of home evolved for you? And how does your diasporic lens shape what authenticity means for you in the kitchen?

“I grew up in Chicago with all my cousins nearby and grandparents within 10 minutes away from my house. I went to my Buddhist temple on a weekly basis and did Japanese drumming—very culturally Japanese American. My family and I also went to Japan relatively often, so I was still very connected to the language and people. My understanding and definition of what it means to be Japanese American is constantly evolving not just as I get older, but also as time and space changes. What I mean by that is, I’ve called a lot of places home. I’ve now been in London for nearly 10 years. I don’t have the convenience or rituals of seeing my family on a regular basis, going to my temple, seeing and interacting with people who literally have a very similar history as me and might look similar to me. So, I think, how do I reconnect [with that part of my identity]? How do I pay homage to it? Reclaiming that sense of home has always been through that lens of food. Food and nostalgia are intimately intertwined. For a lot of immigrant stories, food is what nurtures us and creates a space for a sense of community. Growing up back home, it’d be those big temple potlucks; food was at the forefront of any kind of cultural gathering we had.

I also think the beauty and importance of food lies in the confluence of other cultures. If you’d asked me when I was at university about gatekeeping, authenticity, and appropriation, I probably would’ve had much stronger words about that. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see that the beauty of food is in that confluence—how my grandparents recreated flavors of home in Chicago after internment, for example, or how I recreate Japanese dishes in London. I really like to think about how recipes and traditions inherently evolve based on access [to certain ingredients]. That’s part of the human experience and story. What do those flavors mean to us? What do those dishes mean? What are the stories they inherently carry? But, then how do they have to evolve based on access, locality, and circumstance? That’s why I’ve become fluid about authenticity and gatekeeping in food. What’s ‘right’ or ‘authentic’ is always contingent—shaped by time, place, and the lived experience of the person who’s cooking.

I’m fully Japanese by blood, but my family’s been in the U.S. since the 1880s—so we’re very American. I grew up in Illinois with classic Midwestern casseroles, and is that ‘Japanese food’ in a traditional sense? No. But it’s part of my Japanese America, in terms of the dishes we create that nourish and feed us. That ultimately means something to us as a people, home, and community.”

In the kinds of dishes you grew up with specifically, did you see the confluence of those cultures coming together?

“Definitely. My grandparents were in internment camps during World War II and later resettled in Chicago, where they had to start over—building homes, families, and careers. The food they made reflected that experience. It was Japanese-ish, but also very American, because they were the first generation really growing up in the U.S. One clear example of cultural blending was the influence of Chinese cuisine. In the mid-1940s, after the camps, many Japanese Americans resettled in Chicago, where there was already a Chinese community. Naturally, they gravitated toward Chinese cuisine, and my parents would often say that any special occasion—temple events, weddings, birthdays—was always celebrated at a Chinese restaurant.

Chinese and Japanese food are still important to us. As the family evolved, though, so did our food. The beauty of the American melting pot is that there have been so many other cultures that have become part of my family—Chinese, Filipino, white—and all that has brought in new different food traditions into our family. Even at Thanksgiving, alongside the turkey and stuffing, we’d have rice balls, Spam dishes, and other non-traditional sides. The food I grew up with was a real intersection of cultures. It was what you might call third culture cuisine—long before I knew what that actually was.”

What’s one dish that captures who you are? Something that best encompasses your life, your experiences, your existence—without thinking of what’s authentic, what dish is the most “you?”

Kimchi bhaji. I love deep-frying—move over, air fryers!—and it represents a lot of turning points in my adult life. I lived in India for a time, which was my first experience living fully on my own and really diving into food. That dish reflects that period and my evolving relationship with cooking.

Another is miso—not just as an ingredient, but as a concept. The process of making miso really does encapsulate my attitudes toward food and what it can mean to somebody, especially under the guise of fermentation. It wasn’t until the pandemic I learned to appreciate what it meant to trust the process and have an awareness of what you’re creating through. Making miso taught me to slow down and trust the passage of time. It aligned with my Buddhist upbringing in a way I didn’t fully appreciate until adulthood, especially during the pandemic. We live in an age where everything is immediate, but making miso forces you to slow down. It can take months to ferment (an average red miso takes a minimum of six months), and it’s the antithesis to how we live in this modern age. You have to trust the process, and I think there’s something so beautiful about that.

The first time I saw my parents after the pandemic, we made miso together in my dining room in London. We were literally mashing soybeans and rice koji together. I have some of that miso here, and my mom and dad brought some of that to Chicago. There’s something so lovely about that. Obviously, miso isn’t a byproduct of third culture cooking, but there’s a lot of spins and I include different out-of-the-box ways of making miso in the cookbook. But in this age where many of us are removed from our cultures and recreating homes away from, maybe, one or two homes, the act of creating with someone really forces you to reflect on that.

What was the Japanese American community like in Chicago, in Evanston? What does being fourth generation mean to you in your day to day?

“After internment, Chicago became one of the main resettlement capitals; a majority of Japanese Americans ended up there after the U.S. government had discouraged them from returning to California. Growing up Japanese American meant being rooted in community.

That’s what my temple gave me. I wouldn’t call myself a religious person, but my Japanese American and Buddhist identities are deeply intertwined. It was at temple where I saw people who looked and sounded like me, as well as had similar histories. Maybe our grandparents knew each other before the war in California, or maybe they were at the same camp together. To me, being Japanese America involves that sense of community.

Growing up, Evanston didn’t have a lot of Asian people; I was very much the minority. There was something wonderful about seeing everyone at the temple. We had a shared history, and we didn’t have to explain or justify things. It’s not like we would speak in Japanese to each other, but we just had a common understanding of how things worked. After we left midday Sunday afternoon, we’d usually go to my grandparents’ house for a meal—and then we went back to reality where I wouldn’t see Asian people full stop until I went back the following week.

To me, being Japanese American requires not just a certain understanding of where we came from, but also a certain level of activism. While there are other Asian American communities who’ve been in the U.S. longer than we have, we still arrived fairly early. Given everything happening today, it’s made me more aware of what can happen when civil rights are taken away out of racism and fear. Another part of my Japanese American identity is fighting for others—because I know the legacy of my people and what’s happened to them. It was a long time ago now, but I grew up with those stories so intimately since my grandparents went through it. As I’ve spent more and more time away from the U.S. watching the current political climate, I feel a stronger need to speak up—to use my platform to talk about things that are important and are right.”

Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.