Blog » Eat Out

On my way back to NY, I had a stop over in Madrid for a few hours. Marta and Jose whisked me from the airport to take me to a...

The highly-anticipated moment has arrived: Soba Ichi is finally opening its doors next week – the Bay Area's first housemade soba restaurant. It is an opening that has taken years to create, a partnership between Shinichi Washino, Koichi Ishii, Christian Geideman, and Paul Discoe, who all met...

We go way back with Sylvan Mishima-Brackett, chef-owner of Rintaro. To this day, we still get phone calls and customers asking, "Do you still have those Peko Peko bentos?" Peko Peko was the name of Sylvan's catering company - providing special events with Japanese bites and drinks - and Yoko...

One of the best parts of being in Sake Gumi is attending our Sake Gumi Social events. We host tastings, dinners, and tours centering around sake education and drinking. To tie in with the past couple months of Sake Gumi (last month, the theme...

In honor of Hiroshima month here at Umami Mart, I visited Chinchikurin in LA a few weeks ago, where they specialize in its regional cuisine. Namely they serve Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. A popular chain in Hiroshima proper, this is Chinchikurin's first American outpost, that just opened in the...

Living in Japan, I'm not used to spending a lot of money for ramen. But while in NY, I shelled out $20 for a bowl of ramen and I would do it all over again.

There is a renaissance of sorts happening in Seattle and cocktail culture will not be left behind! Here are four bars we visited and would highly recommend.

We ate Noraneko, a ramen spot in Portland conceived by the same geniuses behind Biwa. The broth was deep and the noodles no-nonsense springy. Read more...

We visit Chizu, a cheese bar in downtown Portland, with a sushi bar concept.

We landed at Mike's Noodle House in Chinatown, Seattle and ate wonton and siu kau noodle soup and chinese donuts and soy milk.

Shanghai Restaurant is our go-to in Oakland Chinatown for green onion pancake, dumplings, noodle soup, and Malantou.

People in Japan are cuckoo for beer. It remains the most popular alcoholic beverage in Japan, accounting for two thirds of all alcohol consumed overall (says Wikipedia). When going out with friends or coworkers after work, it is an ongoing tradition for the table...

Let me start off by saying that I think Abura-ya is the most exciting dining experience in the Bay Area in the last few years. By "exciting" I mean: doing something spectacularly new and genre-bending -- all deliciously, and not one bit bank-breaking. Abura-ya specializes...

Instead of reaching there via a Wardrobe route, Nagoya is about a two-hour bullet train ride from Tokyo. It is the third most populous city in Japan, with 2.3 million people living within 11 square miles. Car geeks may know Nagoya as...

My trip to Kyoto was awesome for many reasons. Temples, new friends, raw nature, or scenes like this one, just three boys feeding hawks like a flock of seagulls. Despite its rural look this is in the heart of Kyoto....

On my last night in Hong Kong, my friend S asked one of her Chinese gourmet friends for recommendations to a good place. We met up with her at Tim's Kitchen, a Michelin-starred modern Chinese restaurant on Hong Kong Island. We spent most of the...

On a game trip to Sacramento in 2001, Lakers coach Phil Jackson called Sacramento a cow town. He also said Kings fans were “semi-civilized” and “redneck in some form or fashion.” Later that season, when Sacramento was matched against the Lakers in...

One of the things we wanted to do when we were in Hong Kong was to try some vegetarian temple food. So my friend S took us to a modern vegetarian restaurant in the Chin Lin Nunnery and Nan Liang Gardens on Diamond Hill in...

It's no secret that I have a massive man-crush on Ramenate, a ramen blog written by a guy named Nate. For the longest time I didn't know his name and thought the blog was pronounced ramen nah-tay, like French. He's one of the rare...

"I talked to a local old man who turned me on to a place around the corner, Po Jai. I remember it [from] when I was groggy and wandering. It was the place with the cops and locals. He told me to order his favorite, khao...