Umami Mart

“I hate Tokyo.” S’s face was perfectly serious. “Sapporo is so much better — less people, nice weather, great seafood, lots of snow… and Tokyo sucks during the summer.” I’ll never hate Tokyo but you can’t argue with a Sapporo boy on that last point. Hokkaido is one of the best places to be during […]

This was one for the ages. Jiro is legendary. It’s spawned a slew of imitators, one of which crossed an ocean. Many think it’s an entity unto itself, like tsukemen, rather than a type of ramen. I’ve known about Jiro since the very beginning of my ramen journey and although I’ve visited a few jiro-kei (aka […]

I went to the future the other day and found this synopsis on an IMDB page from 2018: A lonely Tokyo ramen shop proprietor secretly pines for a local bar owner and former model. His three most devoted customers, two wacky foreigners and their Japanese friend, fear the ramen master will die without passing his […]

One of the things my mum wanted to eat in Kuala Lumpur was bak kut teh, the rather notorious Chinese medicinal broth in which pork, veg and other delicacies are cooked. We’d heard it can be an acquired taste but my brother-in-law found Pao Xiang, a restaurant in the fantastically modern shopping centre Pavilion, opposite […]

By Vanessa Lee Jeju is a volcanic island approximately 240 miles south of Seoul. It is otherwise known as the Hawaii of Korea, as well as Korea’s capital for unusual theme parks — including Love Land, which closely resembled a Good Vibrations shop on steroids. It is considered a destination of choice for Korean honeymooners, […]

Last week, Johnny and I randomly went to Russian River. We hadn’t seen each other much for the past few months, since the conbini planning and build-out, so Yoko gave me the weekend off and I booked a cottage in Guerneville, a town along the Russian River. Neither of us had ever been to Russian […]

An annual treat. HOUSE OF PRIME RIB 1906 Van Ness Avenue San Francisco, CA 94109 T: 415.885.4605

At first glance it didn’t look like there would be anything out of the ordinary in Akabane. A 25-minute ride from Shinjuku, Akabane Station is thronged with commuters coming home or changing train lines — the mark of suburbia. Its local Book-Off has a rather crappy selection of books. The shopping street nearby looked tired […]

I went to France for the first time. As I packed for the trip, all I could think about was the scene from The Devil Wears Prada where Anne throws her cellphone into a fountain. Everyone looks so stylish in that scene, or in any other film set in Paris – going around the Eiffel Tower […]

Whenever I go to Sushi Kuni alone for lunch, I always sit at the sushi counter in front of Kuni. It’s usually packed with Apple employees and the staff are usually all running around like a bunch of crazed chickens — so even if I really want to indulge in some nigiri sushi or makimono, […]