Umami Mart

As you may have heard, there’s a highly anticipated ramen shop coming to Oakland. Our good friends Sam, Rayneil and JJ are the masterminds behind Ramen Shop (that’s right!), opening in Rockridge. The opening is still a few months away, and they are hard at work on their space (formerly the Japanese restaurant Tachibana), and […]

I first learned about ramen – real deal Japanese ramen that is – two years ago. Like many niche interests I stumbled upon it via the internet. There was just something about the heartiness of a bowl of ramen… and the fact that people obsessed over it piqued my interest. It felt like I discovered […]

In the spring of 2012 I suddenly felt the urge to not spend a depressing summer in Copenhagen. Previous years had been a mixed pleasure of monsoon rain, heavy floods, grey skies and Antarctica beach temperatures. I seriously needed a shot of California. Coincidentally the ever food-obsessed Umami Mart team decided to open a shop […]

Push yourself. Every challenge makes you better. Or as I learned, making a fool of yourself at a run-of-the mill ramen shop prepares you for the big boys. I recently traveled to Japan, where I had 21 bowls of ramen in 23 days. It would have been more but I was sidelined for a few […]

Matsunami Ramen was my first stop in Tokyo after a 9-day long trip of a lifetime to Darjeeling, India (more on that later). I was in Darjeeling and Tokyo on business but I was able to squeeze in a lot of culinary excitement into the trip. After eating spicy curries in India, and fresh herbs […]

When it comes to matters of eating out, I am pretty inflexible. Since I will travel long distances for good food, I get pretty upset if I don’t get what I had originally intended. By nature, I am quite stubborn (classic Taurean trait), and I am even more so about what I eat. So when […]

It’s been a while since Umamimart has put on a big event. Honestly, our Gift of Food benefit last April for Japan set the bar so high that I haven’t had the chutzpah to do anything since. So Umamimart took a long hiatus from events. Too long. But that all changed a week ago, when […]

Exactly one week ago on March 26, about 150 people descended onto the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin (just north of SF) for an OPENharvest food and art collective event. The Headlands hosted OPENharvest in a former gymnasium nestled within two hills. The space was filled with stories, artifacts and projections collected during […]

I should confess that I have never really been a fan of tsukemen (ramen with dipping sauce). Shouldn’t ramen be in a piping hot broth, brimming with scallions and chashu (pork) and menma (bamboo shoots)? Tsukemen just always seemed so WRONG to me, despite the fact that I love zaru soba (cold soba with dipping […]

– THIS IS EVENT IS SOLD OUT – UPDATE 3/29, 8am PDT: There are no more tickets available for this event. The Umamimart Shop pop-up booth will be in session regardless, which does not require an event ticket. Stop by and say hi! Cheers, Kayoko Umamimart turned 5yo this year! To celebrate, we’re joining forces […]