"That One Dish" Spotlight, No. 1: Joanne Lee Molinaro
A conversation with the award-winning digital creator on her creative process, vegan-izing classic Korean dishes, and what she misses most about living in Chicago
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The That One Dish Spotlight is a column that connects us with amazing AAPI writers, artists, chefs, and entrepreneurs who talk about the “one dish” that best captures their experiences living at the intersection of one or 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 making and enjoying it evoke vivid memories that serve as links to the past. You can check out TOD’s archive of past interviews here.
Happy Wednesday, all! If there’s one (sadly short-lived) segment I knew I wanted to resurrect from the Dill days and bring with me here, it was “That One Dish”—after which (surprise, surprise), this newsletter was named. I really like the idea of exploring how food and the five senses involved with both making and enjoying it evoke vivid memories that serve as meaningful links to the past. Everybody’s got that “one dish,” the one 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 in their life, Anton Ego-style.
Honestly, there’s nobody better than my first guest for this “That One Dish” spotlight who can speak to how deeply food and the stories behind them shape our identity. Everybody, meet Joanne Lee Molinaro (aka, The Korean Vegan). She’s a lawyer turned award-winning author and digital creator who’s built a following with her thoughtful reflections and candid, authentic storytelling—all of which she shares while crafting delicious plant-based recipes inspired by her Korean heritage. She started her blog after adopting a plant-based diet in 2016 and, since then, has gone on to amass 5 million followers across her social media platforms. Her debut cookbook, “The Korean Vegan Cookbook: Reflections and Recipes from Omma’s Kitchen,” became an instant New York Times bestseller and won a James Beard award in 2022. The reflective stories she shares in her videos about her family, the challenges she’s overcome, and the Korean-American experience—all while rolling up kimbap or nestling tofu into a bubbling pot of sundubu-jjigae—has not only helped her connect with her heritage, but cultivated an inclusive and compassionate community that’s a testament to just how many memories can be weaved into food.
Read on for my conversation with the digital creator (not to mention, fellow Chicago native and UIUC alumna) on what that “one dish” is for her. I also plan on releasing the recipe for this next Wednesday, so keep an eye on your inboxes!
Enjoy, and have a great rest of the week! 💗
How did you approach the process of veganizing all of the Korean foods that you knew and loved when you adopted a plant-based diet in 2016?
When I first started out, I’d think, “okay, how can I replicate these things minus the meat, the eggs, and the fish?” But now it’s more about taking what I love about the dishes from my childhood and applying it to celebrate other foods. For example, I love potatoes. I eat potatoes with everything. There’s this one dish in my first cookbook called gamja tang, which translates to “potato stew.” Yet, the main component of that dish is the pork shoulder. When I first had that, I ordered it off the menu thinking I was going to get this big, delicious potato soup, and it ended up being a meat soup with a little potato on the side. I never understood that. So when I made it for the cookbook, I wanted it to be a soup that celebrates the potato while still having many of the same flavor profiles—the perilla seeds, the heat, the umami of the mushrooms.
So keeping those flavor profiles, but bringing plants to the forefront rather than just trying to constantly make substitutes for meat?
Exactly.
How would you describe your creative process?
The creative process is not linear. It’s like when you eat something and say, “this is my new favorite thing”—and then you eat it every day for two months and at the end of it you never want to eat it again. There’s a little bit of that with the creative process. When I first started my TikTok account in 2020, I told myself I was going to make a TikTok every single day because I just loved it so much and I was so excited. Then, after three months of that, I was, like, “Okay, I need to iterate on this. How can I change this?”
If you look at my TikToks, they’ve obviously evolved creatively for a long time—and now it’s gotten to a point where I need a little break from that. Luckily for me, I’m working on my second cookbook right now. It’s been so wonderful because it’s a process I was knee-deep in back in 2018, 2019 when I was writing and shooting my first cookbook. I took a very long break from that from 2020 until now, so it’s such a joy to be able to dive right back into that and challenge myself even more. At least for me, the biggest thing about your creative process is, like your mutual fund index or your 401k, you need to diversify your portfolio. If you only have X, only Y, or only Z, you’ll burn out pretty quickly. But if you take care to make sure that you have a newsletter, but you also have podcasts or an Instagram or TikTok, you can rotate through those and find that each of those things inspires an iteration of the other to prevent the kind of burnout that often comes with a creative career.
It’s almost like everything informs the other.
I absolutely think so.
What would you say is one dish that captures who you are as a Korean-American? Something that best encompasses your life, your experiences, your existence—without thinking of what’s authentic, what dish is the most “you?”
Jjajangmyun, which is probably why it’s on the cover of my first book. There are so many memories of me, my father, and my little brother wrapped up into that dish. My father loves jjajangmyun; it’s one of his favorite dishes in the world.
My mom was very religious when we were growing up, so we went to church every Sunday. We had no choice. But my father refused to go to church for a long time, and he’d just do his own thing. Then, on the rare occasion my mom had to go to work on a Sunday, my brother and I got to play hooky from church, and my dad would take us to get jjajangmyun at a Korean-Chinese restaurant. At least for me, it was always my favorite thing because we didn’t have to go to church, and we got to go out to eat, and we got to eat noodles! You know, my relationship with my father was not great. It wasn’t terrible, but he wasn’t a very present father—and the only time I really got to spend any ‘non-study’ time with him was when he would take us out like that. There are so many memories wrapped around jjajangmyun, but it’s also a very iconic noodle dish. There’s the Chapagetti version of it, of course, all the way to a luxury version with beautiful, long hand-pulled noodles. Then there’s this whole idea of, well, is it a Chinese dish? Is it a Korean dish? I love explaining it to people who’ve never had it before. There’s just a lot wrapped up in that dish—in addition to it being so beautiful and delicious.
A note from Shayne: Joanne has also shared this story and these memories of eating jjajangmyun with her father in a TikTok video a couple years ago. :)
How do you personally make it?
There are only a few things that I do that are different from the traditional way. Number one, I obviously don’t add any meat or seafood. The other big difference is that jjajangmyun is viewed as a very rich dish. Even though the paste itself isn’t unhealthy per se, you fry it in a lot of fat and get it beautifully roasted—and that’s what gives it its incredibly rich, but complex flavor. In my version, I use about a quarter of the oil that typically goes into that dish. It means that, yes, it may not be the same thing you remember from these restaurants, but you also don’t come out feeling like you’ve just swallowed a whale.
When you’re eating jjajangmyun, what feelings does it elicit?
It’s the same feeling I often have when I eat any noodle dish. The sound and the act of slurping up noodles—particularly noodles like jjajangmyun because they’re in gravy as opposed to a broth—it’s so nostalgic. When you’re in a world where people sometimes make fun of you for not just the smell or look of your food, but even the way you consume your cuisine, it is so nice to be in your home and say, “I made this for myself.” Even if it’s instant chapagetti. “I put this together and I will eat this the way that I want to eat it, the way that tastes good and that feels authentic to me.” It can be overly dramatic, but it’s empowering to say.
Kinda unrelated, but what do you miss about Chicago now that you live in California?
I miss the lakefront path more than anything. It’s so funny the way muscle memory works. Every single day my body just remembers running on that path. I can’t even describe it. My body just goes, “Oh, remember this particular slope or that particular bend?” When I lived in Chicago we lived right on Lakeshore Drive, so we couldn’t have been closer to one of the most beautiful spots for uninterrupted running. We don’t have anything like that at all where I live now, unfortunately. And then there’s a part of me that misses the cold, the frosted breaths and freezing before you get into your car. Your hands are cold and chapped, and there’s some part of that I miss because it was so much a part of who I was and my identity as a Chicagoan.
What would you miss about California if you were to come back to the Midwest?
One of the best things about California is, however hot it gets in the middle of the day, it’s always crisp and cool first thing in the morning. I can always go for a run at 6:30 and be relatively comfortable, whereas in Chicago it gets hot and humid. No matter what time of day it is by the time you step out that front door, there’s just not a good time to run.
Also, I don’t know if this is a California thing or if it’s just that time in my life, but since moving here I’ve made more friends than I’ve ever had in my entire life. I just don’t remember a time where I’ve met so many people I can vibe with on so many different levels where I feel like I can trust them and open myself up to them. I feel so incredibly blessed and grateful to the relationships that I've built, where I just genuinely feel nurtured and cared for in ways that I have not really ever felt in my life. That’s been so rewarding. And I don’t think this is a coincidence, but the vast majority of those people are either vegan, vegetarian, or plant-forward. I don’t have to explain myself to them, and that’s really, really nice.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.