For my birthday this year, I went to Tulum, Mexico with Johnny. It was our first trip we would be taking together and it took ages to decide where to go. Buenos Aires? Mexico City? CUBA??? I hadn't taken a tropical vacation in forever,...
*Nahoko Morimoto is a Tokyo-based photographer. Her work has been featured in Brutus and Vogue Japan.
Uni, burrata, button mushroom, yuzu Son of a Gun Los Angeles
Do you guys all know my pops? His name is Kunio, and he is a sushi chef. Classically trained as a tempura chef, he was offered to transfer to Los Angeles where Inagiku, the Tokyo restaurant he worked at, was opening a location in the iconic
Mr. Thad Vogler needs no introduction. He is a leading barman in the Bay Area and beyond, who opened Bar Agricole in San Francisco in 2011....
Gochi opened quietly in 2005, in a little non-descript strip mall on the back roads of Cupertino. It was actually a bit traumatizing for me -- they bought out a nasty dive bar called the Peacock Lounge where my friends and I used to go when visiting...
*Nahoko Morimoto is a Tokyo-based photographer. Her work has been featured in Brutus and Vogue Japan.
I know it's been almost two months since I visited Bangkok, but I didn't want to deprive y'all of the wonder that is Thai sweets and desserts. So here's a quick run down of the sugary delights we sampled in Bangkok. Us folk...
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...
*Nahoko Morimoto is a Tokyo-based photographer. Her work has been featured in Brutus and Vogue Japan.
After reading Moto's post about making anko (sweet bean paste), I began to reminisce about my visit to a wagashi (traditional Japanese confectionary) shop in Koishikawa, Tokyo called Ikko-an. All of the wagashi are made by hand by the owner Chikara Mizukami, while his wife works...
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...
On Sunday 3/11, the one-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan, Yoko and I helped organize a cross-cultural exchange between bartenders from Japan and San Francisco. Held at Prizefighter Bar in Emeryville, it was an intimate gathering of old friends, and new. Tomokazu...
One of my favourite Thai dishes is som tum, the spicy green papaya salad so prevalent in Northern Thai or Isaan cuisine. I used to love it as a kid, and I love it even more as an adult although sometimes my...
São Paulo has the second largest Japanese population outside of Japan (about 650,000+), but since my arrival here I've been pretty bummed by the lack of good Japanese restaurants. Thank God for the Koreans! Koreans immigrated to SP with promises that Brazil was the country of the...
One of the main things I look forward to whenever I visit Thailand is to be able to eat Thai steamboat or Thai suki (hot pot) at Coca, a restaurant which has been going strong for the last 50 years and is now a...
Spaghetti alla Chitarra prepared by chef Dan Kluger at The Core Club. He is now the chef at ABC Kitchen in NYC. Photo by Erin Gleeson.
I woke up to an email this morning with the subject line: "You're so ahead of your time!" Bryan's good friend Rob was informing me that March is National Noodle Month, and forwarded me this article about the celebrations in LA. So what the...
Sakura's noodle report from Bangkok earlier this week had me craving for a bowl of bah mee nam here in the Bay Area. I scoured the city's Thai restaurant menus but did not find anything comparable to Sakura's favorite noodle dish. But, fear not, as an awesome...
Umamimart is celebrating 5 years this month with a celebration of noodles and how delightful that I get to talk to you all about one of my favourites: bah mee nahm (Thai noodle soup). When I lived in Bangkok, Thailand, from the...
