Umami Mart

One of the joys of working in Old Oakland is Chinatown. We’re only steps away to a wonderland of dirt-cheap eats and one-stop grocery shopping. It has taken us over a year to mine through its dense 4×3 block radius, consisting of restaurants, noodle shops, meat shops, pastry shops, trinket shops, electronic shops, meat shops, […]

In the first post of this series Chinatown, Bangkok, I covered a little family run cockle and mussel stand. I mentioned, “Two stalls hawking some of the finest seafood around,” and promised to follow up with an additional post. While it’s been nearly a year, I’d like to post my experiences now of the neighboring stall: T & K Seafood. […]

After my visit to Sri Lanka earlier this year to see my parents, we stopped off in Kuala Lumpur to meet up with my sister’s family for a few days of shopping and serious eating. The last time I was in KL, I was one year old and my mum was bringing me home to […]

Our shop is located right next to Oakland’s Chinatown, where I spend a lot of my time. This is sort of a dream for me, I’ve always wanted to be near a Chinatown, whether in NYC or in the Bay Area — so I could have access to a variety of banh mi, noodles, dim […]

Recently I took a trip to Southeast Asia, starting off in Thailand. I decided to make the trip up as I went. I didn’t even have a place to stay when I first arrived — a challenge when you land at 10pm. But my first post back has nothing to do with Thai food. Rather, I’d like to […]

Chinatown is awesome. If you can deal with the smell of dead animals and fish, the occasional dead pig or cow sitting on the sidewalk, millions of people walking toward you, a live eel escaping from a bucket onto the street, and guys spitting everywhere as if it’s mainland China, you are good to go. […]