Umami Mart

One of the great joys of importing barware from Japan is that we not only make annual visits to the factories in Niigata but we also get to stop into Ginpachi, a local sushi-ya in Sanjo City. Yoko and I now know that Ginpachi is closed on Mondays – one year we visited Niigata on a Monday […]

Trends in roll combinations in the States are rapid, with so many joints coming up with their own “house” rolls. Conversely, the combinations of rolls or makimono are very constant in Japan. In this post, I am specifically referring to hosomaki (or thin rolls). There are the staples: kappa (cucumber), oshinko (pickled radish) and kanpyo (dried […]