In total, an original umami burger contains 2,185 mg of glutamate. Fleischman has the trademark of the word “umami”, which refers to the salty flavor identified in 1909 by Kikunae Ikeda, a professor of chemistry at the Imperial University of Tokyo who was trying to understand what made brown algae taste good. He determined that the flavor that seemed to fall outside the four accepted flavor categories (salty, sweet, bitter and sour) belonged to the salts present in glutamic acid, a natural amino acid; he called the flavor umami, which essentially means yam. Umami, according to Chemical Senses magazine, could be used to describe the “taste of boiled crab”.
It's also associated with miso, soy sauce, parmesan, anchovies, cured meats, fish flakes, and most things fermented or aged. Ikeda developed a way to isolate the source of the umami (monosodium glutamate) flavor in the form of a crystal and marketed it as monosodium glutamate. Double crushed empanadas, dashi onions, American cheese, pickles and umami sauce in a soft bun. Adam Fleischman, the successful owner of Umami Burger, which now has five locations in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco, recently partnered with nightlife mogul Sam Nazarian.
A friend of mine who lives in Europe makes sure to stop by Umami Burger every time he's in Los Angeles; chef Michael Voltaggio, according to Fleischman, has been there more than a hundred times. For two years, Los Angeles has been steeped in the Umami burger, a meat bomb served with roasted tomatoes, shitake mushrooms and parmesan fries in a roll that is as extroverted and shiny as a bodybuilder's greased rump, and bears the label “U” Umami burgers, in my experience, are greasy, juicy and fat, with a flavor intense and pickled; they fill you up, and make you want more. Fleischman says he came up with the idea for his restaurant as part of an investigation into what makes hamburgers and pizza delicious. He put what he doesn't exactly mean in a blender in his kitchen and, a month later, he opened the first Umami hamburger.
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