Ken Fornataro
Ken Fornataro is an experienced chef, researcher, educator, baker, and activist. Still in his teens in the 70s, he was named Executive Chef at The Hermitage restaurant in Boston, specializing in Imperial Russian and regional cuisines of the then USSR.
From there, he worked at prestigious and often private establishments around the world with Julia Child, Michel Guérard, Anthony Bourdain, and many other influential chefs who shared their knowledge of traditional Japanese, French, Jewish, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Russian, Indian, whole food cooking, preservation and fermentation techniques.
Ken also ran both the kitchen and catering services for Troutbeck in upstate New York, using locally grown and sustainably sourced ingredients in the 1980s.
At Bloomingdale’s flagship store in Manhattan, he ran the Fresh Foods department kitchens that included a line of his own prepared, preserved and fermented foods.
Since 2010 he has led Cultures.Group as the CEO/Executive Chef in a pro bono capacity. Cultures.Group uses fire, sun, water, cold and microbes such as Rhizopus and Aspergillus, as well as yeasts and bacteria in traditional and novel ways to create pickles, miso, amino pastes, tamari, shoyu, cheese, fish sauce, amazake, rice wine, milk kefir, kimchis, garums, bread, vinegar, and mirin.
@cultures.group Cultures.Group Vimeo
Register Now, Watch Later
Get your tickets at KojiCon.Org and make sure you tune in for sessions from experts who are dedicated to keeping traditions alive, transferring knowledge, and saving delicious, nutritious, culturally significant techniques that are in danger of being lost.
Don’t worry if you can’t attend all of these amazing virtual sessions live – all presentations will be recorded and available for a full year after the conference, along with content from Kojicon 2021 and 2022!
Yellow Farmhouse is committed to community building and inclusion and offers different ticketing tiers to Kojicon to provide access for as many people as possible.
Connecticut Residents
Thanks to a generous sponsorship from CT Humanities, we are also offering free Kojicon 2023 registration to residents of Connecticut and for teachers working in Connecticut schools. Register at the link in our bio or at kojicon.org.
Kojicon 2023: Preserving the Past, Fermenting the Future runs from February 20 to March 5 and is presented by @yellowfarmct, an education center on a working farm in Stonington, CT, and @ourcookquest, Co-Author of Koji Alchemy.
