August 15, 2016
August sakes ship today for Sake Gumi, our monthly sake subscription club. If you like what’s on deck here, you should join! “Celebrating Design, Drinks, + Japan” is at the core of everything we do at Umami Mart. It is our tag line, afterall. Four years ago today, full of giddiness and hope, Kayoko and I took […]
July 15, 2016
July sakes ship today for Sake Gumi, our monthly sake subscription club. If you like what’s on deck here, you should join! This month we celebrated the 240th year of the U.S. of A. To commemorate this event, I thought of how I value individuality – in people and in sake. So for this month, I chose […]
June 27, 2016
Sakqueso!, just as the name suggests, was an event we put on pairing cheese with sake. It was loads of FUN! We invited Keisuke Akabori to create a five-course menu and Tim Sullivan of Hakkaisan Brewery to come and pair the dishes with their sakes. Sake and cheese pair very well, wouldn’t you know, since […]
June 15, 2016
June sakes ship today for Sake Gumi, our monthly sake subscription club. If you like what’s on deck here, you should join! There’s a little known secret outside the sake world: Sake + Cheese = Harmony. Before formulating the theme for Sake Gumi this month, I was fortunate enough to talk to all four of the brewers […]
June 6, 2016
Last Sunday, 27 Sake Gumi members took a field trip to the Bay Area’s very own sake brewery – Sequoia Sake in San Francisco. Jake Myrick, his wife Noriko Kamei, and Jake’s friend Warren Pfal started Sequoia Sake together in the lower Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco in 2014. What makes Sequoia Sake so special […]
May 19, 2016
We have a couple new wares on our shelves that are perfect for the next time you serve sake: First up, the Sake Gumi carafe. You don’t have to be a member of our sake club to procure this porcelain tokkuri featuring the Sake Gumi logo. This carafe has a small pouring spout (a style that’s hot […]
May 18, 2016
We are excited to announce our very first field trip exclusively for Sake Gumi members. We’re going to Sequoia Sake Brewery in San Francisco! This is the City’s first sake brewery and we are thrilled to share with this opportunity to tour the site with Sequoia’s founders and sit down for a special sake tasting and food […]
May 15, 2016
May sakes ship today for Sake Gumi, our monthly sake subscription club. If you like what’s on deck here, you should join! The days are longer, the bees are starting to store their honey, and the lines at ice cream stores are stretching around the block here in Old Oakland. This can only mean one thing – […]
May 6, 2016
A motto around Umami Mart is that, “We only work with our friends.” We cherish our community and Yoko and I love being able to source products for the shop by artisans that we know personally, and throw fun parties with them too. I worked as a bartender at Camino restaurant for several years and owe them […]
April 15, 2016
April sakes ship today for Sake Gumi, our monthly sake subscription club. If you like what’s on deck here, you should join! To celebrate the start of rice-planting season in April, we are highlighting the most popular sake rice Yamada Nishiki. Why is it the most popular rice for sake brewing? Because of its ability to absorb […]