Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So ’new’ means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don’t think ’new new new.’ I’m not a genius. A little twist.

Morimoto frames culinary innovation as incremental rather than revolutionary. By insisting that “culture and tradition have to change little by little,” he positions fusion not as a rejection of heritage but as an evolution rooted in technique and respect for craft. His examples—pairing Japanese methods with French ingredients, or adding mozzarella to sashimi—illustrate a pragmatic, chef-driven creativity: novelty comes from small, deliberate adjustments that still preserve balance and integrity. The repeated “a little twist” and the refusal of the “genius” label also read as a professional ethic of humility, emphasizing disciplined technique over spectacle and suggesting that lasting “newness” in cuisine emerges from careful iteration rather than constant reinvention.