The Accidental Chef: Lessons Learned In and Out of the Kitchen

In this funny, frank, and tender memoir, much-loved Ottawa chef Caroline Ishii recounts how she opened the first vegan fine dining restaurant in Canada - and then, eventually, left it.

Born in Toronto to Japanese parents, Caroline learns early to love humble food like daikon pickles and rich mushrooms. So when she decides years later to become a chef, a career switch that is part naïve and part completely inspired, it is early food memories that she mines for encouragement. What unfolds is unexpected and inspiring.

Caroline holds vegan pop-up dinners that land an internationally syndicated documentary-reality television show, The Restaurant Adventures of Caroline and Dave, and garner wide support for her restaurant-to-be, ZenKitchen. Together with her community, she raises funds, guts and renovates a space in Ottawa’s Chinatown, develops a menu, hires staff, passes inspections, and dodges cameras throughout it all.

Part cookbook, part biography, part industry tell-all, each vignette in this memoir is framed as a food memory and accompanied by a recipe for simple, delicious, mostly plant-based fare.

The Accidental Chef is a moving and honest account of one woman growing up and into herself. A series of short, compelling narratives traverse Canadian geographies (Vancouver Island, Toronto, Ottawa) as well as international locales from Caroline’s yoga and food experiences: San Francisco, New York, and Massachusetts, her extensive travels in Japan, and her time spent as a relief worker in Russia and the Ukraine.

This is a cosmopolitan story of the way that food defines memories, losses, accomplishments, and sense of self. Ishii’s position as a Japanese-Canadian woman frames The Accidental Chef and lends freshness and insight to personal reflections on childhood, family life, education, entrepreneurship, and, of course, food culture.

Sarah Brown, Former Editor, Ottawa Magazine

Part memoir, part cookbook, The Accidental Chef is a beautifully crafted chronicle of Chef Caroline Ishii’s life journey from rebellious Japanese-Canadian schoolgirl to celebrated vegan chef. Each chapter relates a pivotal moment in that voyage and ends with a recipe - a taste memory that serves as a touchstone Ishii identifies with a key mentor or major event from her past. In one chapter the author focuses on kokoro, a Japanese word used to describe something that comes from the heart. The Accidental Chef embodies kokoro - a generous guide and recipe journal offered with love.

Peter Hum, Food Editor, Ottawa Citizen

Caroline‘s life story confirms what you instinctively knew if you‘d eaten her delicious and innovative vegan dishes - she‘s a positive, principled, thoughtful person who gives the best of herself for those around her, be they family, friends or customers. This is an uplifting read - and one you‘ll event want to cook from.

Sachiko Okuda, National Association of Japanese Canadians, Ottawa Japanese Community Association

Ishii's style is fresh, insightful and always genuine... the vegan-curious will learn how to create, in their own kitchens, some of Ishii‘s favourite dishes and desserts. Japanese Canadians will relate to the comfort of ochazuke. And all readers will be nourished, replenished, and motivated to boldly seek out the true flavours of their lives.

Chef Brad Long, Chef-Owner, Café Belong at Evergreen Brick Works, and co-host of the Food Network’s Restaurant Makeover

I love the way Caroline shares deep, personal stories with a quick flit of words and, boom, there’s a lesson and a path. I will be trying Caroline’s recipes for exactly the reasons she writes about them: to share with my family, to make and eat them together.

Jeff Brown, author of Soulshaping and An Uncommon Bond

A heartfelt, helpful and healing book. Highly recommended!

Caroline Ruriko Ishii has had a love and curiosity for food and flavours since she was a child in Toronto helping her mother prepare traditional Japanese dishes. This interest grew into a passion for the fundamentals and creativity of cooking while visiting Japan with her mother, and has informed her emergence in Canada as a gifted, award-winning chef, TV personality, and speaker and writer on healthy food and living.

As the former executive chef of Canada’s first gourmet vegan restaurant, Caroline is a trendsetter and an exceptionally innovative thinker about food. She was the creative force behind ZenKitchen—a gourmet, vegan whole foods restaurant in Ottawa that enabled her to channel her trailblazing and fearless approach to cuisine. With Zen, she transformed old ideas about vegan cooking into food that was delicious, sexy, and sophisticated.

Caroline's bold new take on traditional ideas quickly gained a devoted following and critical acclaim, including the silver medal at Canada’s prestigious Gold Medal Plates competition in 2011 and 2012. She has the distinction of being the first woman chef in Ottawa and the first-ever vegan chef invited to compete. The creation of ZenKitchen was also captured in a thirteen-part documentary-reality show called The Restaurant Adventures of Caroline and Dave, which aired on the W Network, Air Canada in-flight entertainment, the Asia Food Channel, and Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) Canada.

Caroline holds an Executive MBA from the University of Ottawa, which she earned during her successful career in marketing and communications. In 2006, she enrolled in the professional chef program offered by the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City, the leading chef school in the world focused on plant-based whole foods cuisine. Following her graduation, she studied with some of the best natural food chefs in the world, interning at famous vegan and whole foods restaurants Candle79 in New York and Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco.

Caroline is first a community builder with a significant following in Ottawa, throughout Ontario, and across the country, and she brings this platform to the project of publishing her first book, The Accidental Chef.