Umami Mart

In the spirit of missing Kanitra, I’m continuing her column w(h)ine-o. I’m not qualified to talk about wine the way she does, but I can at least show you pictures of what I’m drinking these days. When it’s hot out, you gotta go for the pink stuff. There seems to be a myriad of terms […]

When work life gets really hectic, you often forget about the one thing that you really should be taking care of more: yourself. This weekend I shut down, and had some much-needed alone time- somehow, I managed not to even think about work. Instead, I took a nap or two and started reading Siddartha (I […]

Despite the rainy, chilly weather, quite a few people came out for our monthly food field trip, this time to the infamous Czech beer hall, Bohemian, in Astoria, Queens. Such troopers! On top of the miserable weather, I think all of us had been stuck on the N train, or waiting for the N train, […]

This is ridiculously overdue, being the last post in my California Soul series which began two months ago (!). Putting together this video has been haunting me, and I finally buckled down and worked on it for your viewing pleasure. It took me all Sunday to make it, so you better friggin love it! I […]

Please excuse my pathetic ability to describe wine. I realize that my descriptive abilities of eating is pretty mediocre to begin with (lots of ooohh and mmms), but wine is like a whole other sphere of knowledge that I sadly lack. This reminds me of Hua’s post on how “precise description matters“- I am failing […]

There was a point last week when I realized that I had been out EVERY SINGLE NIGHT for 10 days straight- mostly past midnight. This means I ate out, didn’t get enough sleep, was hungover or overdosed on coffee, which resulted in bitchy, near-nervous-breakdown behavior everyday. This sort of crazed single lifestyle (never quite “swinging” […]

The best thing to do in Rome is to just walk around aimlessly. You’ll stumble upon Bernini fountains, majestic cathedrals, and random marble columns and arches that have been around for thousands of years. This is my little lunch on Janiculum Hill, snuggled between Vatican City and Trastevere. Just me, a Bud (I must have […]

Went to a bday bash for Erin the other night at Noona, a hip little new Korean bistro/bar on the edges of Prospect Heights. There, you can get cans of Asahi bigger than your head. Here is Casey demonstrating: he could barely wrap his hands around it, and it is indeed the size of his […]

Last week, Urban Sake‘s Timothy Sullivan was kind enough to invite me to his ongoing sake tasting course, “The Elements of Sake” at the Astor Wine and Liquor Shop’s very new and swanky Astor Center (just around the corner from the shop). It was the second class ever to take place in the gleaming space– […]