Get us in your inbox

News (1)

How the Korean Vegan is championing the marginalized – one plant-based dish at a time

How the Korean Vegan is championing the marginalized – one plant-based dish at a time

If you’re on TikTok, chances are you’ve come across one of Joanne Lee Molinaro’s beautifully produced, brutally honest videos, in which she shares moving stories about the immigrant experience, heartbreak and identity – all while demonstrating how to prepare gochujang pasta or kimchi fried rice. Better known as the Korean Vegan to her followers, Molinaro’s unique style of food blogging is what makes her one of social media’s most extraordinary content creators. It’s even helped her to launch a debut cookbook and memoir, The Korean Vegan: Reflections and Recipes From Omma’s Kitchen, out now. But Molinaro wasn’t always the Korean Vegan we know today. When she first adopted a plant-based diet and started blogging in 2016, she – like many others in this space – often posted the usual photos and recipe play-by-plays. ‘I created the blog as a way to motivate myself to stick with this choice that I’d made to eat plant-based, while also eating the foods that I love,’ she says. I thought I’d utilize my platform to try and open people’s hearts to the immigrant story. A year in, she hit 10,000 Instagram followers and shifted gears to share personal stories about her life and family. ‘I thought that everybody understood the US is made up of immigrants, but I learned that was perhaps very naive on my part,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d utilize my platform to try and open people’s hearts to the immigrant story.’ Her new, intimate approach to storytelling worked. Last summer, Molinaro’s TikTok