Umami Mart

I don’t know what got into me this weekend. I am a proud carnivore. I cannot live without meat, and I don’t even care if it’s “organic” or not. Food Nation didn’t scare me enough to eat only grass-fed beef or cage-free chicken. I will pretty much eat whatever meat parts are served in front […]

I am home in Berkeley after taking a week-long road trip through the American southwest with fellow Umamimart writer Anders, bookended by a five-day trip in NYC. I am so excited to be back in my own kitchen that I’ve stocked up on everything from soft shell crab to chicken thighs for curry. But those […]

As you may all know, I’m half-Japanese and half-Sri Lankan, so anything to do with either country sparks an immediate interest. So when I began hearing rumours about a new Japanese cake shop and tea salon springing up in trendy Primrose Hill in north London last year, my ears perked up. My sister and I […]

Hey hey, Kayoko here, filling in for Yoko this week. Seems that summer has arrived in the Bay Area (a balmy 77ËšF in Oakland, holla!), which means I will only cook meals that take me a few minutes to prepare. Hooray for HOT + LAZY! A favorite summertime dish on a day like today is […]

In Junichiro Tanizaki’s celebrated novel, The Makioka Sisters (or Sasameyuki (細雪), loosely translated as ‘light snow’ or ‘a flurry of snow’–titles in translations are always so different but I guess it’s as much about nuance as meaning), the four Makioka sisters, Tsuruko, Sachiko, Yukiko and Taeko, all born and bred in Osaka, take a trip […]

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I don’t like eggs. But it’s not as debilitating as many people think. I can always get a waffle or bagel with a side for breakfast and choose to ask for no egg with my ramen. Luckily I am okay with foodstuffs with eggs as an […]

I am finally back. Although the past couple of weeks have been super hectic, I had the opportunity to go to my favorite restaurant Kajitsu, twice in two weeks. At the end of March, my work held a special dinner gathering there, and I wasn’t planning on going, but at the last moment I got […]

I’m going through Yoko withdrawl. We were literally joined at the hip for the last month, gearing up for our GIFT OF FOOD benefit: chatting, Skyping, meeting with each other, organizing, coordinating, planning with our other awesome collaborators. It was definitely a huge team effort to put on THE GIFT OF FOOD, and without Yoko, […]

I used to be amused by the number of Kewpie mayonnaise tubes my 85 year-old grandma had stashed in her packed fridge in Tokyo. I would visit her house every few months to clean out her fridge. She would forget that she already had certain condiments and kept buying them because they would get buried […]

My wife and I are dressed to kill. The guards are looking us up and down. My hands are sweating. I enter awkwardly remembering last minute to bow, even though I’m not sure who these people are greeting us at the door. We walk further in and meet Eriko, the multi-lingual and chic Italian counterpart […]