Caroline Ishii grew up in Toronto as a third-generation Japanese Canadian, or sansei, and some of her strongest memories of home are tied to food. Her mother was born in Vancouver, but after losing her parents at a young age, she was sent to live with relatives in Japan; when she later returned to Canada and reunited with her siblings in Toronto, she recreated the food she missed using the Japanese and local ingredients she could find. Caroline's relationship with her mother wasn't always easy, but food was one of the places where they connected — her mother showed her how to make Japanese food, and somewhere along the way, Caroline developed the same love for those flavours.
Perhaps that's why autumn feels so meaningful to her. In Japan, the seasons are deeply connected to how people eat, and autumn is one of the great food seasons — newly harvested rice, mushrooms, kabocha, sweet potatoes, chestnuts, and persimmons. Caroline feels much the same way walking through a Toronto farmers' market in the fall: she wants to taste everything, and preserve some of that abundance before it disappears. That instinct is what brings her to takuwan, the Japanese daikon pickle she'll be serving at this dinner — for her, it carries memories of Japanese Canadian families adapting their traditions through difficult times, preserving what they had and keeping a taste of culture alive.
For this supper, Caroline is bringing together the Japanese home cooking she grew up with and the autumn harvest she loves cooking with today. These aren't necessarily the dishes you'd find on a restaurant menu — they're inspired by comforting, homemade food meant to be shared. The entire menu is vegan, but as with the food she served at her own restaurant and how she continues to cook today, the point is simple: the food must be delicious and beautiful, made with care and kokoro (heart).
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🌱 This menu is plant-based.
Yaki Mushroom Onigiri Ochazuke
Crispy mushroom rice ball in broth.
A play on ochazuke, the classic Japanese comfort dish of rice steeped in hot tea or broth, with a pan-seared mushroom onigiri and a fragrant green tea–dashi broth with kimchi-'cheese'.
Kinpira Lettuce Cup
Green beans, carrot, gobo (burdock root) and arame seaweed, stir fried in a light soy-sesame-maple glaze and served in crisp lettuce.
Harvest Dengaku Donburi
Harvest rice bowl
Cranberry–miso glazed, thick atsuage tofu in the style of dengaku — a centuries-old method of grilling skewers brushed with sweet miso. Served alongside tender kabocha no nimono (simmered local kabocha squash), over hakko genmai, a tradtional macrobiotic preparation of organic brown rice delicately fermented with azuki beans, revered for its nutritive properties and complex flavour. Garnished with a homemade shiso and roasted sesame furikake, and served with Caroline's homemade takuwan and shio koji pickles.
Dorayaki with Azuki & Matcha
Sweet red bean–chestnut paste pancakes with matcha cream.
Two pillowy Japanese pancakes sandwiching sweetened azuki (red bean) and chestnut paste, with with luxurious matcha cream.
Matcha-Ginger Chocolate Truffle
Organic fair trade chocolate truffle coated with matcha and filled with candied ginger.
Genmaicha Tea
Japanese green tea with roasted brown rice — a must for all Japanese home meals
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Caroline Ishii is a writer, award-winning chef, and storyteller whose work explores food, memory, identity, healing, and belonging. She is the founder and executive chef of ZenKitchen, Canada's first vegan whole-foods fine-dining restaurant, named Best New Restaurant of the Year. At Gold Medal Plates, she earned two silver medals and made history as the first woman chef to compete in Ottawa, and the first to present a vegan dish in the competition's history. She was also host of the 13-part reality-documentary series The Restaurant Adventures of Caroline and Dave (W Network, OWN, Asia Food Channel), and author of Rendezvous: Stories of Love, Loss, Identity and Belonging, The Accidental Chef, and Canadian Vegan Recipes (published in Japanese).
carolineishii.com | @carolineishii
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The Depanneur is where Interesting Food Things happen. For more than a decade The Dep has been showcasing Toronto's remarkable culinary diversity by hosting unique food events. @thedepanneur
