Umai-do

Homestyle Japanese pastries
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1825 S Jackson St          Central District  
206 / 325-7888               Facebook page

-closed Monday and Tuesday
-no credit cards  
-seating and seasonal specials available  

  
Interview with owner, Art Oki


Art Oki is the owner and manju-maker at Umai-do in the Central District. 

pink mochi with 
white bean paste

"I make traditional Japanese sweets, both steamed and baked.  The steamed are called daifuku, which is mochi on the outside with either red azuki bean or white lima bean as a filling.  The red azuki bean is either smooth--which is called koshian--or the coarse or chunky one is called tsubuan.   

"The  baked side of things, there are two that look like, one like a mountain potato, which is imogashi, and the other one looks like a chestnut, which is kuri manju.  Then we have two dorayakis, which are pancake-style sweets, one is a plain battered with a chrysanthemum branding on it, the other is a matcha dorayaki, which is a green tea batter with a maple leaf branding on it."

In addition to this regular menu, there are rotating specials. 

dorayaki:

pancakes with 

red bean jam

"We are doing seasonal things, dictated of course on what season it is.  Currently we're doing sakuramochi, which is a cherry leaf sweet; so it's a brined cherry leaf that wraps around a pink mochi with koshian.  Then previously we've done dark chocolate filled mochi, and a pumpkin anko--anko is paste--for the Halloween-Thanksgiving season.  We encourage people to let up know if there are things you would like to see on the menu, whether it be seasonal or on our regular list."  

Although Umai-do feels old-fashioned, it's actually a new business, and a new direction for Art.

"This is a recent venture; my previous career has actually been in government, doing finance, accounting activity in various departments.

"I trained down in Los Angeles, in Little Tokyo, for five summers and one winter, at a place called Fugestsudo, and they have been in existence for over a hundred years.  So they were nice enough to let me work on the production side to learn the basics of learning how to do daifuku and other sweets making."

Manju-making might seem like a strange choice for a second career, but for Art, Umai-do has been a long time in the making.  He remembers the dark decades when Seattle had no source for fresh Japanese sweets.

  sakuramochi:  
a spring special 
with red bean 
paste and mochi 
inside an edible
pickled cherry leaf

 "When there was nothing in Seattle, people, they had to travel out of state.   A lot of them would go down to California--San Jose, Los Angeles, Gardena--and get the fresh manju there.  As they landed they went to the shop to order their specific ones they wanted, and as they returned they would go by the wagashi shop to quickly pick up their order and then fly back home, which then they would have to immediately deliver to their friends at whatever hour they landed.  

"You know, one- two o'clock in the morning you get a phone call, and, 'I have to bring some stuff over!'…This is, yeah, this is true friendship."

On the other hand, Umaido was also inspired by Art's even earlier memories of the days when Seattle's Japantown was well supplied with fresh mochi and manju.  

"Way back when, in the early '60s and before, there was a wagashi shop in Seattle called Sagamiya.   And growing up I was a kid that was lucky enough to go in probably once every couple weeks to enjoy one or two of the sweets or the senbei they had made in the shop and just remembered that as a kid and wanted to bring that back to Seattle..The Nissei that remembers Sagamiya, they say they like it; it's close to what Sagamiya had, the wagashi is not as sweet as others that they eat, so it's more enjoyable and brings it back to when Sagamiya was around."