Description
If the original Umami Burger on La Brea is an introductory course in the intricacies of the legendary Fifth Taste, the Los Feliz restaurant, poured into the sprawling former home of Cobras & Matadors, is like a graduate seminar on the topic. with a complete list and roster of Japanese craft beers and even a rather good soju-based umami cocktail, flavored with cucumber and yuzu, whose effect is lessened only slightly by the tangle of hardened seaweed gel rising out of the frosty glass. The burgers are compact beasts: fat, dripping, loosely compacted patties nestled into hand-size, gently toasted buns. A Manly Burger is glazed with beer cheese and peppered with chewy cubes of smoked bacon; a Hatch Burger is paved with roasted green chiles; a Triple Pork Burger (only served at their La Brea location) tastes like smoky-style chorizo lightened with ground pork and ground bacon. There are crisp thin fries now as well as the triple-fried potato girders that harden into concrete after 30 seconds, and a selection of - kill me now - kombu meals, combination deals whose name refers to the umami-rich seaweed nowhere included on the plate. (These are not Happy Meals, unless you don't mind Junior quaffing a pale ale with his meat.) For dessert? Burger-shaped ice cream sandwiches imported all the way from Milk on Beverly, intensely flavored concoctions stuffed between the halves of giant, Paris-style macarons.(See full review)
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