Umami Mart

We are more than a little excited to announce our first art show with long-time Umami Mart contributor Erin Gleeson. A year ago, Erin started her photo and illustration blog The Forest Feast, after moving to the California woods from NYC, where she spent many years as a food photographer. Since, the website has rapidly […]

Our great friends and talented ceramicists Rie and Jay of Atelier Dion have designed cups for Umami Mart! Please join us this Thursday to celebrate the launch of our teacups, in three different designs. Of course, Rie and Jay will be here! And Bicycle Coffee will be here to serve coffee too! WHAT: Atelier Dion for […]

Happy October! The air is a bit crisper, the leaves, brighter. What better way to get ready for the colder months than to cozy up with coffee and tea? We’ll be celebrating the mighty bean and tea leaf all month, with warming posts on the subject, and a sale over at the Umami Mart Shop, […]

That’s right, we be grillin’ balls this Friday! Our good friends Koichi, Ryoji and Steven of YATAIYA will be making yaki-onigiri (grilled rice balls), and serving them alongside some house-made tsukemono (pickles). They are irresistible, smoky flavor-bombs! If we’re lucky, they’ll have other fun munchies on the grill as well. Come welcome Autumn with us! The grillin’ starts […]

Photos by Erin Gleeson We did it! With the loving support from our friends, family, and community, Yoko and I have opened Umami Mart, a retail shop in Oakland, CA, specializing in kitchen + barware from Japan. The idea for starting a brick-and-mortar shop really derived from necessity. We had been running our online shop for […]

Photos by Erin Gleeson After weeks of painting, building, going to Home Depot five times a day (ugh), sleepless nights, banh mis for breakfast/lunch/dinner, pestering our friends and families (are you done with that project yet? Can you cut wood for us? Can you polyurethane the floors?) — UMAMI MART HAS LANDED! To celebrate, we […]

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS??? Umami Mart’s big grand opening is tomorrow night! The doors will officially open at 6pm sharp, and we’ll be having a special kagamiwari ceremony at 6:30pm, which is a tradition of breaking open a cask of sake. It symbolizes the start of a new beginning. Woohoo! This will not be a dry event. […]

Hello! Sorry I haven’t been blogging much, but I wanted to update you on how the shop is coming along. Our big opening day will be next Friday 8/3! Waaaaa! We’re slaving away here every day and have put everyone we know to work. Ha! No seriously, all of our friends and families are involved […]

I am ecstatic to announce that Yoko and I will be opening a real-deal brick and mortar store in Oakland, California!!! This all happened very quickly for us and these last few weeks have been filled with meetings, many trips to the hardware store, more meetings, and lots of painting. The construction will come soon […]

The Umami Mart Shop popped up in Old Oakland for five days last week inside Piper + John General Goods, located on the charming brick road of 9th Street. It was a great success! We launched on the bustling “First Friday”, which is a huge sprawling art party throughout Oakland every month, thrown by the […]