Umami Mart

After months of hard negotiating, Johnny is moving to the East Bay! Yup, we are moving in together, into a quaint one-bedroom apartment with views of Lake Merritt on super cheap rent. It wasn’t easy to convince Johnny to move over to the sunnier side of the bay — he has lived in the Outer […]

Now, Umamimart has never really been “in” on the “scene”. We don’t really get invited to hip opening events or get star attention from restaurants when dining. We have never paid too much attention to those kind of things — we just like to talk about food and drinks — whether it be gross, pretty, […]

Confession: I’m kinda tired of Asian food. Maybe because I eat it every day. So when my Mile High Dining Club friend declared he wanted to throw a Moroccan inspired dinner I was totally there. Moroccan, African and Arabian are probably the less trendy food cultures compared to the Italian, French and Japanese kitchens these […]

Happy New Year!  I can’t believe the holiday season passed so quickly, and now we are in 2012.  Soon we will be bitching about the hot summer. I was in Japan for the holidays, and had quite a few good food moments. I am really thankful to iPhone since I can now take pictures anywhere […]

Do you serve your best food on ugly plates? Are you still using the saucers from your mom’s back closet from when you moved away from home? Or do you instead spend all your birthday money on new additions to your Floral Heaven dinnerware set, dreaming of one day completing the whole thing to impress […]

We all know how even the saddest piece of stale-ass bread can taste so good when we’re out in nature, hungry after a walk and enjoying the snack with friends and the singing birds. When you talk about umami, it’s not just about the flavours in your mouth. It’s just as well about all the […]

I’ve taken an initiative here to start a new column. It’s a hodgepodge of gay-related posts on food. Please enjoy. My apartment is filled with stuff. From expensive All-Clad to ass-chap printed glasses to Prada to Louis Vuitton, I have them all. Gaysians are especially bad when it comes to brand names. I usually don’t […]

I was checking up on the backend of Umamimart the other day, and noticed something peculiar– someone had landed on this here blog by Googling the keyword phrase, “whore teacup.” After a little Googling myself, I came to find that Lady Gaga had posted a naked photo of herself on Twitter with a teacup that […]

I’ve been in the US for 14 years, and I have pretty much tried all of what this great country has to offer for the kitchen. As you remember, from Smart Lidz to vegetable-life-prolonging bags to cheap mandolins, I’ve experimented with many gadgets, and found them all very useless (and almost lost my thumb). But I […]

The 25th Umamiventure took place at Hida Tool and Hardware in Berkeley. After writing about sharpening Carbon and Stainless Steel knives on Umamimart and receiving a lot of questions, I thought it would be good to take these questions to the source. Chika, the knifemaster, at Hida Tool and Hardware. Chika has been working with […]