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It was founded in 1966 by Japanese immigrants Michio and Aveline Kushi, pioneers of the natural-foods macrobiotic movement who began selling imported organic goods such as brown rice, miso, soy sauce and umeboshi out of their Boston home.

For fillings, our vegetarian kids like a bite of pitted umeboshi plum or a slice of pickled cucumber or radish, or some combination.

Taki even grows a small number of ume plums, used to make Japanese plum wine and “umeboshi” salted plums.

But Taki also makes his own umeboshi from apricots and red shiso — which he says have nearly the same flavor as real umeboshi — and sells them at his booth through the summer.

It derives from a pickled stone-fruit snack called see mui in Cantonese, which is itself related to Japanese umeboshi, a snack made of salted ume plums or apricots pickled into sour little balls of delight.