Umami Mart

Summer seems to be a fickle thing here in muggy London. Not sunny enough for a picnic but warm enough for some chilled beer so we headed off to Belgo Noord for some moules, frites et bieres. Just north of Camden Town, the restaurant itself has an industrial feel but it’s cool, clean and light. […]

I’ve been dying to visit the San Pedro Fish Market since Sara wrote about it a few years back. It’s the perfect summertime Umamiventure! Although it’s always summer in LA, isn’t it? Sigh. Since I’ll be in LA this week, let’s all get together and gorge on fresh oysters and crab and shrimp and drink […]

Since Japan is surrounded by ocean, it’s very easy to get very fresh seafood in any part of the country. We Japanese love squid, octopus, and any kind of chewy seafood. Italy’s geography is similar, and they also love squid and octopi. Fried calamari, Italian restaurant’s signature appetizer is basically the same thing as squid […]

Last week, my colleague had told me that he was going fishing on Saturday night. Come Monday morning, he gave me a cooler full of five squid. He kept them on ice, and they were so fresh! They didn’t smell fishy, which is a good sign for “fresh” seafood. I wanted to bring them home […]

Just in at Sushi Kuni (my pop’s restaurant): RAW OCTOPUS (nama dako)! Kuni ordered this long, spindly tentacled arm last week straight from Tsukiji market. It was over three feet long, with a gorgeous purple-pink tone. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but there’s something oddly sexy about it. Kuni lightly blanches it, […]

Got these clams from a roadside seafood guy that Naoko always goes to in Katsuura, Chiba. I remember he worked out of a ramshakle space, dotted with random trinkets for tourists and framed dust-covered posters from the 70’s. You would never think this were a place to get the freshest, top-of-the-line seafood. He must sell […]

I bought a sac of shirako at my local supermarket for 90 yen (85 cents). I never knew that shirako was so cheap since I had never had the balls to prepare it until now. Shirako is the seminal fluid of fish who shoot their sperm onto roe. It is served in many different ways […]

Since moving back to California, I’m trying to branch out more and find new places to eat all over the Bay Area. A few weekends ago my parents and I took a nice drive out to Pescadero, a quaint little town out on the coast, just south of San Francisco. We had an awesome Umamiventure […]

Hakodate is a pretty lonely town. When you walk through the morning market or ichiba (Hakodate’s version of Tsukiji), shopsellers show their desperation as they shove sample pieces of melon and corn in your face. It’s hard to say “no” to their persistence, but just saying no was the only option, if we wanted to […]

The Canned Crab Bar is guilty of false advertising. I almost forgave them for not serving any canned crab while dining on fresh, juicy crab legs and seafood-cream pasta… until I saw the bill. We walked into the Canned Crab Bar located in a tiny alley in Yoyogi-uehara expecting canned crab. But instead the only […]