Umami Mart Registry
[caption id="attachment_28447" align="alignnone" width="600"] Photo by Elaine H. on Yelp[/caption]

- OK, yes, the Bay Area is the epicenter of tech, but this doesn't mean we need to literally eat off of iPads here. San Francisco's Quince serves “A Dog in Search of Gold," a dish of white truffle croquettes, on an iPad Pro that's playing a video of dogs searching for truffles. iRoll. (Eater)

- There's a weird fungal infestation in Lakeshore, Ontario. No, it's not a really bad case of athlete's foot, but a mysterious black mold that's coming from a whiskey distillery that's coating everything in the surrounding area, including houses, chain-link fences, street signs – everything. The Hiram Walker Distillery had been trying to solve the mystery of the fungus for more than a decade before hiring mycologist James Scott to figure out if they were responsible for the rampant mold. Turns out the answer is yes, but what causes it and how to get rid of it are even more fascinating. (Wired)




- If multi-media artist Cynthia Delaney Suwito were to knit you a sweater, you might look good enough to eat. That's because the Singaporean artist knits with instant ramen noodles. For her exhibition, "Knitting Noodles," Suwito created a video loop of her painstakingly knitting instant noodles. She chose the ingredient because they symbolize society's need for speed and instant gratification, but the meticulous process takes patience and time, a reminder that sometimes it's worth your while to slow down. (Laughing Squid)

- Sometime next year, you'll be able to text your friends that you had dumplings delivered to you for dinner – all in emoji. By mid-2017, we can expect to send new food and drink-related icons, including dumplings, takeout boxes, and pretzels. But don't hold your breath for a hummus or even a lettuce leaf emoji, as the criteria for what foods are turned into these icons are pretty strict and the Unicode Consortium, which decides on what gets made into an emoji, isn't very culturally diverse. Still, changes are coming, and as Unicode diversifies its committees, we'll hopefully start to see more variety and specificity in how we can express ourselves in pictograms.🍻 to that! (NPR)



- Props to this patient, good natured woman in the video above. Me? No way I would be down for the shenanigans. Don't ever mess with my ice cream. (Indian Citizen; via Russell Yip)




The Umami Reader: Mining the internet for stuff about food worth reading and watching