“This is going to sound terrible,” chuckled Woodford Food & Beverage Executive Chef Courtney Loreg recently, when asked what happened when she first saw acclaimed baker Atsuko Fujimoto’s resume 22 years ago.

Fujimoto was 31 and had previously worked as a film and entertainment magazine editor in Tokyo before deciding to switch career tracks in 2002. So she applied for work at Fore Street, where Loreg was a sous chef.

“(Fore Street chef-partner Sam Hayward) had Atsuko’s resume, and I was like, ‘Oh, Sam, another change-of-life person?'” Loreg said. “Because she hadn’t cooked (professionally) or done anything like this before. He said, ‘No, I have a good feeling about it,’ and I’m like, ‘OK, whatever.’ She gets hired, and I loved her, and we’ve been good friends ever since. But originally, I didn’t want to hire her.”

Fujimoto and Loreg traveled to the James Beard Awards ceremony in Chicago in 2022, the first time Fujimoto was a finalist for the Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker award, honoring her work at Norimoto Bakery in Deering Center (Loreg was a finalist that year in the Best Chef: Northeast category). They’ll fly to Chicago this June, too, as Woodford is a finalist in the Outstanding Hospitality category and Fujimoto is again a finalist for the Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker Award – a national category pitting her against four other top bakers around the country. Fujimoto was a semifinalist last year.

Fujimoto’s achievements in the culinary world are no surprise to Portland food scene insiders.

“I would say we’re very lucky to have Atsuko in Portland,” said Chad Conley, owner of Rose Foods. “Her precision and attention to detail, her quality and consistency, it really stands out. She can make a version of something you’ve had a million times before, but she’s able to put a spin on it that’s recognizably hers, and it just puts a smile on your face every time you eat it.”

“It’s a super unique style, not just to Portland but to anywhere,” said Jordan Rubin, chef and restaurateur behind Mr. Tuna, Crispy Gai and Bar Futo. “Her pastry program is as good as it gets; that’s why she’s getting all this national attention.”

“Unique” is indeed a word that comes up often when people describe Fujimoto’s work, which includes such fan favorites as Double Chocolate Sake Cake, Yuzu Meringue Tarts and Shokaccia, Japanese shokupan milk bread baked flat like focaccia and flavored with Maine seaweed, or savory lunch treats like norimaki rolls filled with fiddleheads.

“I think her style and way of thinking about food combinations is unique in the genre, not just in Portland,” Loreg said. “There’s no one else who comes to mind who is incorporating the kind of ingredients that she does into her pastries. I love the fact that she makes babka with adzuki beans. Who else would think of that? But it’s delicious.”

“Her flavor profiles are always just spot-on, and so well balanced,” said Stacy Begin, owner of Two Fat Cats Bakery. “She’s creative, but she really honors the classics and is just very focused on quality. I think the best is yet to come for her.”

Fujimoto’s success is all the more remarkable considering that she started working in the culinary field more or less as an antidote to boredom.

PRESENTATION WITH RESTRAINT

Often when a person makes a career change into professional cooking or baking, it’s because it’s a calling: They’ve done it at home for years, and have always had a passion for the work. Not so with Fujimoto.

When when she and her husband, Brian Norris, moved from Japan to Maine in 2001, Fujimoto continued her journalism career by writing freelance stories but soon grew bored with the work. She’d just started to develop an interest in cooking – which she indulged with frequent trips to Harbor Fish Market and the former Portland Greengrocer – and was eager to work away from home.

When she applied to Fore Street, she wanted to be a line cook and had no real interest in baking or pastries. “I guess I don’t like to eat sweets that much,” said Fujimoto, always quick to smile and laugh.

Her first position at Fore Street was plating desserts during dinner service.

“To my surprise, I think I did OK,” she said. “I remember the general manager once came to me and said, ‘Your plate presentation is superb.’ I said, ‘It’s probably because in Japan, if you buy some gifts, usually the presentation or wrapping is more important than what’s in it.’

“I studied tea ceremony in high school in Japan, and there you learn how to present really everything,” she continued. “You have to have sort of harmony on your plate. So it shouldn’t be overly presented; you have to have some sense of restraint. So maybe that worked great for me. It’s more about presentation that’s never showy. It’s very, very simply done to showcase what you’re using.”

In less than a year, Fujimoto was given more baking production shifts at Fore Street, where she learned to actually make the desserts, not just plate them. By the end of her four years at Fore Street, she’d become genuinely interested in baking.

In 2006, she started working at Standard Baking Co., where she focused on Viennoiserie, French baked goods like brioche made from yeast-leavened, enriched dough, and often laminated – densely layered with butter – like croissants. “Very rich, fluffy bread,” she said.

It was at Standard that Fujimoto first got on the baker’s early-morning schedule. She started her shifts there at 3:30 a.m. Her days at Norimoto now begin at 4:15. “A little more time in bed at that hour of the morning makes a big difference,” she laughed.

She stayed four years at Standard, then was hired by Masa Miyake, former chef-owner of Japanese restaurant Miyake, around the time he was launching sister restaurant Pai Men Miyake. Fujimoto developed several recipes for Pai Men, like gyoza dumplings and steamed buns, along with some desserts for Miyake.

‘FEEDING ALL THE COOKS IN TOWN’

In 2014, Fujimoto partnered with Markos Miller to open the international bakery and market Ten Ten Pié in East Bayside. After a dozen years in professional kitchens by that point, this was the first real showcase of her own original work. The venue would introduce the public to her signature style of applying Japanese touches to classic European pastries.

Fujimoto said it helped that, at that time, Asian food and new Asian restaurants were trending nationwide, and ingredients like dashi and yuzu were popping up on all kinds of menus.

“So I thought, ‘OK, this should sell,'” she said. “And I started to bring more Japanese ingredients into the French pastries I was making. I made a lot of miso-caramel things and chocolate sake cake, which I still make. I started to use adzuki beans for adzuki-filled bread. I was making almond croissants with matcha.” She paused to reflect, then laughed. “I feel like I overdid matcha. It was all well received, but we weren’t that busy.”

So to boost sales, Ten Ten Pié started offering savory lunch dishes, which allowed Fujimoto to cook some Japanese-style curries, japchae (Korean glass noodles) and rice bowls with braised pork belly.

“She’s known for her pastries, which I think are unbelievable,” said Rubin. “But her savory stuff used to be my go-to for a nice healthy lunch. She’s just incredibly talented all around.”

“A lot of cooks in town came to Ten Ten Pié to eat lunch and get desserts. People like Jordan (Rubin) and Austin (Miller) from Mami were there a lot,” Fujimoto said. “At a point, I felt like I was feeding all the cooks in town. I felt like a Japanese mother to them. It was nice to get to meet them.”

The bakery and market was cherished by its many loyal customers, though it closed abruptly in 2019. When you ask Fujimoto why, she just laughs: “I still don’t really know, but it did.

“When Ten Ten shut down, a lot of people emailed me, including all the coffee shops we did wholesale with,” she added. “They said, ‘Are you going to continue this? Because, one, I need pastry, but two, you should.'”

As a stopgap, Fujimoto briefly worked out of the basement at Woodford Food & Beverage, which has always used her brioche buns for its beloved burger. Soon, Begin of Two Fat Cats reached out to Fujimoto to say there was space in the back of their South Portland bakery that she could sublease.

Fujimoto moved into the Two Fat Cats space, intent on filling wholesale orders. But within months, the pandemic hit.

LOW-KEY FACADE

As restaurants and coffee shops were suddenly forced to temporarily close or curtail their operations in early 2020, 14 of Fujimoto’s 15 wholesale accounts (all but Woodford) seemingly vanished overnight.

Like other businesspeople at the time, Fujimoto realized she had to pivot to keep her business alive. So she improvised a digital retail ordering system. “I was thinking, ‘Maybe I can use Instagram, and people can call or text me to order,'” she said.

For six months, Fujimoto took orders by text and set the finished baked goods on a speed rack outside the back door at Two Fat Cats for contact-free service.

“People in the South Portland area started to come, so I got busy in this little space.” Then as restaurants started to reopen, and many offered burgers and sandwiches for takeout, Fujimoto’s wholesale burger bun business resumed for clients like Kuno, Boda and Little Giant.

“She managed to hang on,” marveled Loreg. “It takes a lot of will and strength and positivity to do stuff like that, over and over.”

Fujimoto looked for a location of her own but couldn’t find anything downtown, where the vacancies were either too big or too expensive. Then a space on Stevens Avenue in Deering Center opened up. “It was surrounded by schools and a residential area, and I thought it’d be a good location for small bakery like this.”

She launched Norimoto Bakery in the 900-square-foot space in October 2021. To this day, the bakery doesn’t have a Norimoto sign out front, doesn’t even have an official logo in any form.

“Making a sign was on my list,” Fujimoto said. “I thought, ‘So I open in October, and after the holidays, I’ll get to it.’ And I never did. I was always telling people that it’s between Quality Shop and Rwanda Bean, but I wanted to have something that people can just look for that is very recognizable.”

She reached out to artist Charlie Hewitt, creator of the famous “Hopeful” sign in Woodfords Corner, whose studio is in Deering Center. Hewitt made Fujimoto a small neon “Hopeful” sign for her front window, which remains the most distinct feature of the bakery’s facade. Inside, the bakery is all business, with a small ordering area in front decorated with some little figurines of cats and elephants beneath the cashier counter, and the rest of the space dedicated to production.

“What I personally love about Atsuko and her shop is that she’s not trying to attract that attention, and she’s not trying to be anything other than what she is,” said Conley. “It’s not the most Instagram-friendly shop, but I think that is really refreshing and admirable, and it seems to me the (James Beard) judges appreciate that.”

“She’s not making a big splash. She’s kind of under the radar to a large extent,” said longtime customer Gene Harris, of South Portland. “As I’ve watched her, I’ve learned that is her style: to have essentially a functioning kitchen and not necessarily a retail front. But I think we have a real gem in Atsuko and Norimoto.”

“I want to keep this low-key for now, because we are busy enough, and I feel like our neighborhood customers like it that way. They don’t want us to be any more popular because they don’t want to wait in a line,” laughed Fujimoto, even though the bakery still gets lines some weekend mornings.

Still, the low-key approach briefly befuddled a highly prized customer. Martha Stewart sought out Norimoto Bakery specifically when she visited Portland in 2022 for a little culinary recon. “She couldn’t find it at first, and then she went to Rwanda and asked where we are,” Fujimoto said. “I’m glad she found it.”

Fujimoto said news of Stewart’s visit spread far and fast and boosted the bakery’s business much more than news of her Beard nominations did. “I think it’s amazing how much interest she draws just by visiting one place,” she said.

FEELING THE HEAT

This year, as she heads into her third summer at Norimoto Bakery, Fujimoto is considering some changes to the operation. The small space gets intensely hot and humid in the summers, a problem that came to a head with last summer’s extreme rain.

“I don’t feel right about keeping this place cooler and drier by running all the air conditioning while the oven is on. And you still have bad outcomes with the pastries, even with the AC,” Fujimoto said, explaining that the heat and humidity cause dough to overproof and butter to leach out when she’s laminating and shaping it.

“And it just looks very crappy,” she added. “You don’t want to struggle so much to just have a crappy croissant.”

So Fujimoto is thinking of ways to temporarily change Norimoto’s concept away from baking – perhaps more toward the savory Japanese-inspired lunch dishes that still pepper her menu occasionally – so they won’t have to run the ovens as much this summer.

“I thought about changing the brand just for a few months to be maybe an ice cream shop or a bento box place. You can’t really be tied to one idea when you’re so small,” she said. “You have to be flexible.”

“She’s an incredibly resilient person and still manages to be creative, which I think is probably the hardest part – to deal with all of the staffing struggles and logistics and then also have time to step back and think about food in a creative way,” Loreg said.

Fujimoto may not be sure of her plans for Norimoto this summer, but she’s clearly comfortable improvising on the fly.

“I get bored very easily, so I always have to think of something else,” she said. “I always want to see some growth in me as a baker or a cook, so I feel that I have to change what we do all the time, so that we can learn.”

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