Category: Food | Restaurants

Good places to buy tea:

• Kettl for matcha (Hukuju and more)
• Fortnum and Mason (Earl Grey, Rose Pouchong, Lapsang Souchong)

New to me:

• Ippodo tea for matcha (Ummon and Ikuyo and Sayaka)
• Red Blossom Tea
• Treasure Green

Luna Koshihikari is the it rice for Northern California/Bay Area restaurants and foodies. You can read about it in Eater and can buy it from Berkeley Bowl, Umami Mart, and several other specialty grocery stores. It actually is really good, fluffy, neutral and I'd recommend buying it.

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Otherwise, the Tamaki haiga is the one to get. I use the gaba, quick, or white rice regular setting on the Zojirushi but the gaba setting is the right one to make it perfect. It just takes forever.

Other rice: Anson Mill's Carolina Gold Rice is good but it's crazy expensive. Carnaroli for risotto, bomba for paella, and Kodafarms (going out of business soon) has good sweet sticky rice, rice flour, and Kokuho rose. I've made but I don't really fool around too much with jasmine, basmati, or long grain rice. I don't like brown rice.

For pasta go with Rustichella D'Abruzzo for spaghetti, bucatini, mezze maniche, farfalloni, and orecchiette. There's a couple bulk sales a year at Market Hall for this pasta and I grab some when it happens. Otherwise, fresh, home made pasta is easy enough.

Related for rice: Also get shichimi togarashi, Queen's gochujang, and Huy Fong chili garlic sauce. For rice cookers, get the Zojirushi induction cooker or even better, the Cuchen IH pressure cooker. Both are top of the line.

Related for pasta: Rao's marinara and vodka sauce are really good. Bianco DiNapoli canned tomatoes are good and this tomato paste from Mutti.

Go with Mafter Bourgeat and get one of their black steel pans (the 11 3/4" one) and get the remainder from their stainless steel collection: the 9-1/2" and 11" fry pans, the 1-3/4 quart and 4 quart sauce pans, and the 7 quart stock pot. Altogether, these should run you about $500-$600.

There's a small detail with these Mafter pots and pans that's not in most cookware. The handles are attached in a way where the rivets don't go through so the interior is clean.

Also:

• This copper/induction ready Hestan set I guess if you want to splurge. Duparquet is the bigger splurge.
• Grab these Mac knives – 9" chef (or alternate), slicer, utility, paring
• Grab this spatula, microplane, Hi-soft cutting board
• 12" cast iron skillet (for fried chicken) and 10.5" cast iron griddle (for pancakes) are also nice and have been put to good use