Umami Mart

On my last night in Hong Kong, my friend S asked one of her Chinese gourmet friends for recommendations to a good place. We met up with her at Tim’s Kitchen, a Michelin-starred modern Chinese restaurant on Hong Kong Island. We spent most of the day traipsing through quite local areas so it was a […]

On a game trip to Sacramento in 2001, Lakers coach Phil Jackson called Sacramento a cow town. He also said Kings fans were “semi-civilized” and “redneck in some form or fashion.” Later that season, when Sacramento was matched against the Lakers in playoffs, Kobe was stricken with food poisoning that left a lot of LA […]

One of the things we wanted to do when we were in Hong Kong was to try some vegetarian temple food. So my friend S took us to a modern vegetarian restaurant in the Chin Lin Nunnery and Nan Liang Gardens on Diamond Hill in Kowloon. The restaurant is situated in the temple gardens and […]

It’s no secret that I have a massive man-crush on Ramenate, a ramen blog written by a guy named Nate. For the longest time I didn’t know his name and thought the blog was pronounced ramen nah-tay, like French. He’s one of the rare bloggers whose writing holds my interest regardless of the subject matter […]

“I talked to a local old man who turned me on to a place around the corner, Po Jai. I remember it [from] when I was groggy and wandering. It was the place with the cops and locals. He told me to order his favorite, khao soi chai. Sold! Breakfast was settled. Now I have to […]

One of the most memorable nights I had in Tokyo was an adventure in Nakano, a hip neighborhood in Tokyo. We met up with our friend and Umami Mart writer Will, aka The Ramen Shaman, along with Eri, who suggested a yakitori joint called Shimon-ya. Eri, editor of Ecocolo magazine, brought along her entire staff, […]

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 […]

Japan is noodle crazy. Each station in each town of each prefecture have their own noodle specialty. Being noodle fiends ourselves, Kayoko and I researched some of the regional noodles of Niigata prefecture before setting foot there last month. As soon as we arrived, we noticed a lot of ramen and soba. We wanted to […]

One of the joys of working in Old Oakland is Chinatown. We’re only steps away to a wonderland of dirt-cheap eats and one-stop grocery shopping. It has taken us over a year to mine through its dense 4×3 block radius, consisting of restaurants, noodle shops, meat shops, pastry shops, trinket shops, electronic shops, meat shops, […]

In Hong Kong, one of the places my friend S insisted we try was one of two highly-rated restaurants serving Shanghai crab. Lucky for us, we were at the tail-end of the Shanghai crab season. I love crab but hadn’t tried the Shanghai variety before. As she’s an adventurous soul, she took us to the […]