Umami Mart

*Yoko is in China for 10 days! And with no access to Facebook or Instagram, she is sending us photos the old school way — via postcards. We’ll be featuring these snapshots from Yoko in Chengdu and Shanghai all week here on the blog. Enjoy! – Kayoko A Shanghai breakfast mean carb-in-carbs. This breakfast food […]

I’m not ordinarily a breakfast person, I’d rather get an extra half an hour of sleep instead. However, if I’m going to have breakfast, I want it to be special. And in Hong Kong, we were only looking at two options: congee and wonton noodle soup. The thing I love about Asia is that you […]

Let’s be real: when my brother Keisuke said he would join us for our First Annual Kauai Trip, I hoped (really hard) that he would cook for us. Ah hell, we all did. Have you seen Casa de Kei? His midnight creations are totally bananas — creative yet approachable; high art meets B-kyu (aka comfort food). […]

Even though it’s starting to become spring, it’s still cold in some parts!  We were recently in NYC and since Jonathan’s family has a house in Vermont, we took a group of friends there for the weekend. We cooked big meals together, played snow football and spent evenings by the fire. (It’s kind of like […]

I’m so over normality. I’m over generic cafes, mediocre restaurants and bleh bars with all their effortless interiors, lazy service, boring menu offerings and pointless existence besides making money (in these days: little). The next time I walk into a cream coloured cafe serving cafe lattes in a standard glass with a napkin around it, […]

I drove up the well hidden path framed by carefully manicured greenery and pulled into valet (only to ask, “is there street parking close by?”), and a rush of old Hollywood imagery washed over me. Frames from The Way We Were and Shampoo fluttered about as I fell into a movie star k-hole. After some […]

About a year ago I took a new job which has had me traveling to Bangalore a few times a year. I loved Indian food before ever stepping foot into the country, but then again I never really experienced Indian breakfast other than a dosa or two. Bangalore, and South India in general, is famous […]

It’s been universally acknowledged that August is the month of sloth. Is that a problem for me? Jamais! My parents are in town and apart from my mother who doesn’t seem to understand the word lazy, the rest of us are fans of the easy life and what’s easier than to hop onto the Eurostar […]

Shakshouka is a delicious and very common breakfast menu item in Israel.  It’s basically a pot of marinara type thick sauce that is baked in the oven with a couple eggs cracked in it. It comes straight out of the oven on a cutting board and is served with warm bread.

August is the month of sloth so we rolled into Wembley, north London for a laaazy Sunday brunch at Sakonis. Surrounded by shops selling everything South Asian from sarees and cricket bats to sweet Pakistani mangoes, this cheap and cheerful eatery is the perfect place for a South Indian vegetarian breakfast. Food is served all […]