Meeting All the Wonderful People in San Francisco

With Heid at her Quitokeeto studio

The next day, we started our morning in Mission.


We visited my friend Matt, at his Small Trade Company's studio. His studio is gorgeous with all his designed bags, clothes, and so many different things. It's located in the same complex as Heath Ceramics and newly opened Tartine Manufactory. So, we got a VIP tour of both shops by Matt!


Brunch at Tartine Manufactory was fantastic.


We got to try many different pastries and dishes.


The same complex consists of different shops and artists' studios. We also visited Aesthetic Union, which is an artisan print house. Jason demonstrated some of his beautiful antique printing machines for us. It was so cool.


In the afternoon, we visited Heidi and Wayne at their studio, Quitokeeto. Heidi is also a very popular cookbook author and photographer. She has been a big supporter of our donabe and she uses different donabe in her cooking.We signed each other's books! Both Heidi and Wayne were so sweet and we had a great time.


We kept ourselves busy and went to Bernal Cutlery. They are the best knife shop in San Francisco and have been supporting our donabe and cookbook, too!


Last stop was Omnivore Books, which specializes in both current and antique books about food and drinks. I was so happy to learn my DONABE Cookbook has been popular there!

We totally enjoyed a full day of meeting wonderful people in San Francisco.

Family dinner at Kin Khao in San Francisco

With Pim and Nagatani Family

After Isako and Yasuhiro spent several days with me and Jason in LA, we (except for Jason, who had to work) left for San Francisco together.

Opposite to LA weather, it was chilly in San Francisco! I guess that's normal there. We stayed at a nice apartment I booked by Airbnb. It was a corner room on 17th floor and had great views from both sides!


In the evening, we got together with Akiyo (Isako and Yasuhiro's sister), her husband, Takahiro, and their son, Gentaro. They flew in to Portland spent several days there on Takahiro's business and came down to San Francisco on the same day with us. We had dinner at Kin Khao, a very popular Thai restaurant by Pim! She took great care of us.

We had a feast of delicious multi-course Thai dishes!


Every dish was so complex with layers of flavors and I just couldn't stop eating.

 
Everybody was so happy. It was the best Thai meal I had ever had! Pim is such an amazing person and you taste her passion and love in every dish. Thank you so much, Pim!! 

Nagatani Family in LA

Late last month, Yasuhiro and Isako, the 8th generation siblings of Nagatani family (the donabe producer from Iga, Japan) came to LA for the first time!

We wanted them to experience something very LA. So, on the first night, we took them to Salazar for Mexican dinner. We enjoyed many different dishes in the patio dining.


Sunday morning was farmers market in Hollywood. We had fresh west coast oysters for breakfast.


Luckily, Dodgers had a home game, and they won against Chicago Cubs 1 - 0!


Another night, we went to Otium for dinner. Tim and the team created special donabe courses for us! One of the cold appetizers was A5 wagyu beef sushi, caviar, and shima-aji tartare, served in donabe steamer, Mushi Nabe. It was so gorgeous. Then, smoked BBQ eel, seaweed, and avocado, made in donabe smoker, Ibushi Gin, was so aromatic and the eel was very meaty and wonderful.


We had many other wonderful dishes, too.


Then, a big donabe rice cooker, Kamado-san, was brought to the table. Chef Tim opened the lid and it was a big rice dish with grilled squid, shiitake mushrooms, negi, and confit of egg yolks!


Tamari sauce was drizzled over the rice and the contents were mixed throughly.


The dish was ready!
It was so perfect and oishii!


Thank you so much for the wonderful donabe dinner, Chef Tim and Otium team!

Happy donabe life.

DONABE Article on Essen & Trinken

Naoko's debut on Essen & Trinken, the most popular food magazine in Germany!


3-page article about donabe cooking and Naoko's interview about donabe cooking, cookbook, etc. Donabe is going international! Unfortunately, I can't read German, so I don't understand the full article, but I'm sure it's a good article and I'm very happy!

Happy donabe life.