Umami Mart

I usually make a vat of potato salad before I leave for a trip, leaving my husband poor and defenseless against the elements of bachelorhood. But this time I didn’t have time before the trip and figured he’d be able to fend for himself… It turns out that while I was gone for three weeks […]

Whenever I take a test, I always make associations between certain things in my life so that I will memorize keywords. Sometimes the explanations get really long but sometimes they come to me very quickly and concisely. Sometimes associated words come to me when I am not studying a test, which is the case for […]

On a particularly temperate Los Angeles evening, three Umamimart writers (one a founding member), and an Umamimart photographer, joined three Umamimart supporters and friends for a lovely dinner at Robata Jinya in West Hollywood, CA. Of the diners, two were strict vegetarians, one a somewhat new carnivore and the rest more of the “don’t knock […]

I’ve become addicted to miso. You know, that Japanese brown and weird looking paste consisting of fermented rice, soybeans, salt and the fungus kōjikin. Or at least that is the most traditional recipe, but miso can be found across Asia in many different forms and flavours. Outside Japan miso is mostly known as the main […]

Despite being in the U.S. for nearly 30+ years, Japanese cuisine instantaneously conjures up the word “raw.” Sushi has proved itself the winner despite criticism ranging from “this is unsanitary,” to, “I am ingesting unsafe levels of mercury,” to, “This is just plain gross, slimy and/or stinky.” Japanese food and sushi have virtually become synonymous […]

This is a personal post about being lost in culinary hell and finding the path home again with a little help from my Japanese friends. In case someone out there might be in the same situation that I was in, I hope this helps and inspires. If I sound like a self-holy, born-again foodie asshole […]

We’ve been very lucky. Since last summer, we’ve had a bona fide udon-ya (shop) right here in London. Serving sanuki udon (a type of udon from the Kagawa region of Japan) that is prepared in-house, Koya boasts chefs that trained at the famed Kunitoraya in Paris. Proper udon and one even my extremely fussy Japanese […]

The one (and only) thing that I miss about the disgustingly humid temperatures in Tokyo is the arrival of cold noodle dishes on menus everywhere. During the hot months of June through September, I would convince myself that I deserved a daily reward of a big bowl of cold noodles for surviving each hot day. […]

Frying has always been something I was afraid of. I remember my grandma frying whole fish in a huge wok of oil. It took brawn and a fearless attitude toward unpredictable flying specks of oil traveling at high speeds. I will never be half as tough as my grandma, and I still don’t have the […]

Fishcakes, such as the Homo Sausage, chikuwa and kamaboko, are some of my favorite foods. It usually weirds people out in the States because of its “processed” figure; but I really enjoy its chewy, rubbery texture, and its flavor of the sea. I’ve always loved fishcake (as does Kayoko) and it’s very disappointing that there […]