Ramstad: In 2020s twist, YouTuber Kimono Mom reaches global food audience — and Minnesotans

Last weekend, I walked into my neighborhood Lunds & Byerlys and smiled as never before in the countless times I’ve been through those doors.

There in front of me stood Moe, the creator of the Kimono Mom cooking channel I’ve followed for years on YouTube, where she has 3 million subscribers and millions more on social media platforms like Instagram.

She wore a blue kimono and a burgundy and gold obi. Her husband Moto set up a cooking stand as their 6-year-old daughter Sutan, who grew up before viewers’ eyes as her mom demonstrated Japanese recipes, played Uno at his feet.

Seven other volunteers and I had signed up to help this family from Tokyo pass out samples of food marinated in Kimono Mom’s Umami Sauce. It’s a sauce Moe developed in 2023 to make Japanese cooking easier for people who don’t have access to ingredients that are common in Japan.

All that afternoon and again the next day at a Lunds & Byerlys in St. Paul, dozens of other fans of Moe’s Kimono Mom videos turned up. And I saw the same expression of utter charm wash over their faces.

“It was around pandemic time when I found her videos,” Amelia Li of Edina told me. “I didn’t think she would come to Minnesota. It’s my first time meeting a celebrity.”

The history of international food trade goes back more than 3,000 years. And the creation of celebrities in various arts and crafts goes back at least 500 years to the invention of the printing press, when it became easier for people to hear about talented people in distant places.

Because now a person can put a smartphone on a tripod, do something as simple as cooking food they love, and share it worldwide instantly. There is simply nothing standing in the way of a creative individual and an audience.

Sutan was a baby when an American expat with a popular YouTube channel, Paolo from Tokyo, asked Moe if he could feature them in a video he wanted to make of a typical day in the life of a Japanese mother.

A short time after Paolo’s video in February 2020, Moe decided to try YouTube herself by showing how easy it is to make Japanese food.

She opened her first video holding her daughter and saying, in English, “Hi guys, welcome to Kimono Mom’s Kitchen. I’m Moe, and this is Sutan.”

About 7 minutes into the video, Sutan called out for her mother’s attention. Moe picked her up and finished mixing a batter of lotus roots. From then on, Moe carried Sutan in a sling during the cooking lessons. When Sutan could stand, Moe put her on a stool at counter height to watch.

I became hooked on Kimono Mom’s videos in late 2020, when I sought a video to make tonkatsu, a breaded pork cutlet. We were still in the pandemic lockdown and, like a lot of people, I was trying new things in the kitchen.

The pandemic, Moe told me, comes up often when she interacts with fans. They tell her she carried them through a difficult time.

“Some start crying when they see me,” Moe said.

As Moe’s videos expanded beyond recipes, they became appointment viewing for me, 10 or so minutes of calm at the end of a week. She eventually moved beyond recipes to portray her brief stint as a geisha-in-training, discuss a bout with depression and chronicle her entry into the business world.

When Sutan was around 2, she wanted to crack an egg. For several weeks, viewers saw Moe help Sutan crack an egg. Then one week, Sutan did it on her own.

Moe clipped Sutan’s effort into a YouTube short, which now has 31 million views. “That was definitely their viral moment,” said Linda Moua of Minneapolis.

Fans — who like any Asian fandom have their own nickname: Kimonokos — turned up from as far away as Mankato and Fargo to meet the family at four different Lunds & Byerlys stores last weekend.

“I first saw her when I watched Paolo, when she was taking care of the baby,” said Kaylee Xiong of Brooklyn Park.

“I was looking up a karaage recipe and I found her video. It didn’t come out very good. It was my first time trying it,” said Cody Torres of Minnetonka. “I’ve tried quite a few things. There’s a braised beef recipe. That turned out a lot better.”

Viewers often messaged Moe that it was difficult to get ingredients like seaweed. She began to develop a cooking sauce using tamarind as the base, with seaweed and mushroom extracts.

As I told dozens of shoppers last weekend, it’s got half the salt of soy sauce, is a little bit sweet (from organic brown rice syrup) and relies on shiitake mushrooms and kelp for the umami punch.

San-J, the Japanese maker of sauces, took on U.S. production and distribution. Moe and Moto decided to tour the country in an RV to promote it. Over the past year, Moto drove the family more than 20,000 miles to about 80 Whole Foods stores, the first national chain to stock the sauce. Lunds & Byerlys is one of the first regional grocers to offer it.

The day before they flew to Minnesota, Moe posted a video of Moto driving the RV from Chicago to Los Angeles, where the family will live for the next year. She and Sutan flew ahead because school was starting.

In the video, Moe intercut images of herself setting up their new house, putting together a bed and some furniture, with Moto stopping to fish and look at the mountains.

“We were worried about him to drive alone,” Moe said. “But we didn’t have to worry. He was doing great.”