July 7, 2016
It’s a cool, cool summer. At least in the Bay Area, where we’re getting fogged-in a bit this week. Still, when summertime comes around, we’re all about eating chilled foods, like Hiyashi Chuka, Cold Tofu Salad, Cha-Soba, and Nikumiso Udon. Our two new Studio Arhoj Summer Bowls are perfect for tucking in to cold dishes. Their […]
January 12, 2015
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all are well-rested and ready to start another RAD year with Umami Mart. We won’t take you for granted! There are lots of projects in the pipeline, and we hope you will all enjoy everything we throw at you. Yes, we have closed our San Francisco shop, which […]
October 3, 2012
A new cocktail bar opened in Copenhagen in the spring of 2012. The creation of the bar had been in the making for years. The owner is a friend of mine, who is an impressively ambitious and creative entrepeneur building bars around town with finesse and style. As soon as he mentioned the theme of […]
May 23, 2012
A few months ago, I designed a ceramic mug shaped like a monkey’s head, for rum-based cocktails… and no, it wasn’t for selling in stores. I don’t think it would be very consumer-friendly. Yet it had a purpose — the only tiki bar in Copenhagen, Brass Monkey had approached me to design a cup for their drinks. […]
March 15, 2012
Remember when I designed the Umamimart travel mug back in 2010? Well, this spring Scandinavian Airlines (SAS as we call it in Denmark) called for submissions from designers to redesign their cardboard cups for tea and coffee, during air travel across the globe. They serve 70,000 customers in the air every day (!). You see, when I’m […]
October 5, 2011
Lesbians. What a wonderful and exotic breed. Much less visible or loud in the public space than gay men, but definitely not dull. Have you talked to your lesbian co-worker today? Maybe you should. Ask her about her cat (she probably just adopted one more), her advice on great kitty litter shopping deals (buy in bulk) […]
September 14, 2011
Yay, there’s finally a real farmer’s market in Copenhagen! After decades of supermarket deathbore, a new race of DIY vendors, small farmers, honey harvesters and local produce hippies will show up in their home-built vans with truckloads of cheap, fresh, delicious and organic fruits of the earth, and deliver the goods our generation has been […]
August 31, 2011
My city has experienced the wettest summer in the recorded weather history of Denmark. Just this morning I woke up to a two hour thunderstorm with the most insane cracks, blitzes and a mustard yellow hazy sky. It felt like some aliens were landing on the planet in giant yellow spaceships. Unfortunately they didn’t, and […]
August 17, 2011
You either hate them or you love them–the open-faced sandwich. Most Danes love them, it’s what they’ve eaten since they stopped being breastfed. But of all the foreign friends I have enjoyed a traditional Danish lunch with, around 50% have left most of the food on the table. Perhaps it was too different in taste […]
July 27, 2011
Italian ice cream, especially from Sicily, has this smooth, creamy texture which you can eat with a spatula. It’s gorgeous, sexy and slimy. In the best way. Ice cream in Danish is called “is” as in ice–meaning we call that slippery cold frozen water stuff for is as well. Meaning denotes from the colloquial, like […]