The Umamimart Shop has been busy popping up all over the Bay Area, and here's one coming to Oakland! For this one, we're teaming up with the fine folks of Piper and John General Goods, a magical shop in historic Old Oakland. What: Umamimart Pop-Up...
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...
Exactly one week ago on March 26, about 150 people descended onto the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin (just north of SF) for an OPENharvest food and art collective event. The Headlands hosted OPENharvest in a former gymnasium nestled within two...
Remember when Yoko and I went to Japan last year with the OPEN crew? God, it seems like forever ago. We had so many rad, eye-opening opportunities, like rice harvesting in Niigata, visiting farms in Nagano and organizing a line of pop-ups on...
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.ย Held at Prizefighter Bar in Emeryville, it was an intimate gathering of old friends, and new. Tomokazu...
My most recent obsession is making anko (sweet bean paste) from scratch. As I wrote in my strawberry daifuku post a couple of weeks ago, using bean paste as dessert doesn't really exist in the west. But I am trying to find ways to...
PREFACE OPENeducation: Napa Valley Bee Company +++ My A-HA! moment during OPENeducation in Berkeley was when Bob Cannard asked me "Who was the last person that made noodles in your family?" When I became red-faced and unable to answer the question, he followed up...
OPENeducation was a daytime event at the Berkeley Art Museum, and part of the Chez Panisse 40th Anniversary weekend. The event gathered 15 or so organizations creating an outdoor classroom, with kids and adults doing the educating, learning and eating....
Maiden Lane in San Francisco on Wednesday at 12:30 was swarming with people chowing down on really affordable organic lunch boxes. The event was sponsored by the Edible Schoolyard and Levi's and went something like this: get in line, grab a lunch...
SF Chefs spanned three days, August 5-7, and looked like it landed from somewhere in outer space, onto Union Square (notice how the tent is "punctured" by the Dewey Monument pole in the photo below). I went on Sunday around 1pm and the sides of the...
Chef Gabriel Kreuther of The Modern prepared this dish for the recent 4th Annual Taste of the Greenmarket benefit in NYC. Update from The Modern (Tues. 7/26, 12:45pm EDT): The dish is Needle Panna Cotta with Nasturtium flowers and...
Paystyle and Vanessa are in New Orleans this week for the annual cocktail fรชte of the year, Tales of the Cocktail--hands down the most important event in the world for cocktail heads, bar chefs, liquor companies, alcoholics, et...
โAre we really doing this?โ I asked, uncertainly nibbling on a grilled shiitake mushroom. Eriko paused before answering. โI know I was talking some pretty ambitious stuff the other night, but I think we should try it,โ she replied. โWe could end up pulling...
Mash-ups has been en vogue for over seven years now. Every time Britney or Gaga release a new smash hit it's instantly mashed up with an old Kylie Minogue or Human League hit. Sometimes, it's because mixing and mashing creates an entirely...
Do you serve your best food on ugly plates? Are you still using the saucers from your mom's back closet from when you moved away from home? Or do you instead spend all your birthday money on new additions to your Floral Heaven...
The Japanese Grill: A Whole New Level of Summer Favorites Thursday, June 16 @ 6:30 pm Japan Society, NYC You may think grilling is a signature American summertime sport, but it has been used in Japanese cuisine for a very long...
Like a whirlwind, the Manhattan Cocktail Classic came and went in a flash, leaving a trail of devastation and destruction in its wake. Except in this case the damage wasn't in the form of homes and property, but rather brain cells and...
All Photos by Yoko Kumano. About a week after our initial GIFT OF FOOD fundraiser in San Francisco, Yoko and I were approached to help organize a similar event down in LA, to benefit the victims of the 2011 Sendai Earthquake and Tsunami. Could...
Annual Sake Tasting & Lecture: Back to Basics! Tuesday, May 10 @ 6:30 pm Japan Society, NYC Every year, Japan Society hosts a sake lecture and tasting, inviting dozens of brewers from Japan. Over the years, we've covered so many topics on sake--from...
MUSICAL LINE-UP (Update Tues. 3/29, 11:50am PST) Tommy Guerrero Gadget (Function 8 ) TophOne (RedWine DJs) DJ Orb Gabuใกใใ (Amoeba Records) +++ The night of March 10, here in Oakland California, was like any other night. I finished my shift early,...
