Umami Burger: What the Hell is Umami?

For those of you that watch the food network or trendy food shows about what's hot, you've probably heard about Umami Burger.  If you live in LA or the surrounding area, you've probably heard about Umami burger.  For those of you that haven't, this one's for you.

Let's start with, What the Hell is Umami?  According to wikipedia, where all things are true:
Umami /uːˈmɑːmi/, a savory taste, is one of the five basic tastes (together with sweet, sour, bitter and salty).  A loanword from the Japanese , umami can be translated as "pleasant savory taste".  This particular writing was chosen by Professor Kikunae Ikeda from umai "delicious" and mi "taste". The kanji  are used for a more general sense of a food as delicious.  People taste umami through receptors for glutamate, commonly found in its salt form as the food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG).  For that reason, scientists consider umami to be distinct from saltiness.  Get it?  To be honest you really don't have to, Umami = really effing good food.

Juliet and I tagged along with Sol for a work trip to L.A.  We decided to go to Santa Monica for a few hours to sight see etc.  I asked Sol to Yelp (which I find myself to be using more and more, a very effective tool I might say) it and look for a lunch spot for us on the way up there and she mentioned Umami Burger, I stopped her and told her that's where we'd be going.  We almost passed it but I saw what looked like either red lips or a burger bun on the door, no sign.  You know a burger place with no sign, must be good.

Lips or Buns?

We sat down quickly with no wait.  By the way the key to dining at a famous restaurant and not having to wait is going at off peak hours, we got there about 2:00pm on a Wednesday.  I opened the menu, and saw it, all of the glory, the words were sparkling on the page, they were singing to me like Micheal Jackson's 'Beat it', "Eat Me, Eat Meeeee, all you wanna do is Eat Me..."  It was the,

'Truffle'd Burger: their famous blend of beef, truffled aioli, house truffle cheese, truffle glaze'

I saw it, closed my menu and didn't look at anything else.  I ordered a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA while we waited, a GREAT beer I might say.  I literally had to ask the server for the menu again just to see what else they had.  We also ordered some fries with shredded short rib, onion rings with a malted tempura batter and house made ketchup.  I usually hate house made ketchup, it has sucked 100% of the time, until now.  This was awesome, why am I writing a line about ketchup?  Because it was that good.  The rings were light, crunchy and not greasy.  The fries were also nice and crunchy, they didn't need ketchup because of the short rib and gravy that it came with.

I apologize for not having a better picture :(

On to the burger.  The server suggested medium rare which seemed a bit too red for me but I went with the 'when in rome' attitude.  I didn't regret it.  I cut the burger in half and it wasn't too red it all.  As the server put the Truffle'd Burger in front of me the aroma melted my heart.   Do you know what truffle is?  Do you know what it smells like?  Do you know what it tastes like?  It's an indescribable happiness that is created inside you when you come into contact with truffle. Yes, I'm talking about food.  Back to the burger.  It was obviously very juicy, but they have a great bun that held up extremely well, unlike San Diego's Hodads (for some reason i'm bery bitter that everyone loves Hodad's and I think its just straight hype).  I was honestly afraid there would be too much truffle but that just wasn't the case.  The bun to meat ratio was on point, and the different flavors danced around my pallet like a, like uh...I don't know but they danced around in my mouth happily.  I can say without hesitation, this was the best burger I've ever had.  But I still don't know what the hell Umami tastes like.  Do your best to make the trip to Umami burger, and if you figure out what Umami is, let me know please.  Until my next worthy meal...