If you’ve ever been captivated by the warm glow of outdoor string lights or beckoned by the siren song of cafes whose walls say things like “Eat! Drink!” and “Yum!,” chances are you’ve been to Umami Burger.
The fast-casual restaurant, which was ubiquitous in Southern California in the early 2010s and promised to blast people’s taste buds with unique flavorings, was a cultural phenomenon. At its height, there were once more than 20 locations across the country, earning accolades from legacy news outlets and endorsements from Hollywood celebrities. The chain’s founder was quickly knighted as a modern darling of the national chain restaurant landscape, with multiple global brands to his name.
But as time went on, the chain’s presence began to fade, spurred on by a mix of changing tastes, rapid expansion, a high-profile sale and the occasionally dubious actions of its founder.
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Today, there is precisely one Umami Burger left in California — at the bygone culinary wasteland that is Los Angeles International Airport. The forgotten outpost at LAX has nearly 1,000 Google reviews and a 2.6 rating, and the menu on the restaurant’s mothballed website links to a bizarre pop-up with a bikini-clad woman on it instead. The company’s Instagram page, a lonely, static grid of glistening burger photos, hasn’t been updated in years.
Since then, its founder, once a successful entrepreneur who abruptly opened and closed several businesses, has been accused of squatting in a widow’s home in the Hollywood Hills.
FILE: The signature burger at Umami Burger in Costa Mesa is the Umami burger, which includes ground beef, shiitake mushroom, caramelized onions, roasted tomato, parmesan crisp and umami ketchup.
FILE: The signature burger at Umami Burger in Costa Mesa is the Umami burger, which includes ground beef, shiitake mushroom, caramelized onions, roasted tomato, parmesan crisp and umami ketchup.Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group via Getty Images
When Umami Burger first stormed onto Los Angeles’ restaurant scene, however, the brand seemed unstoppable.
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‘We’re urban, avant-garde’
Back when “Girls” first aired on HBO, Barack Obama was president, and peplum skirt sales reached their zenith, Umami Burger was an exhilarating concept. During that time, it truly did feel like having a female CEO at Yahoo could solve gender inequality, and that eco-friendly clothing brands could save the planet. Surely, a burger topped with a crispy parmesan disc could disrupt the culinary world forever.
Adam Fleischman, a Los Angeles entrepreneur and aspiring screenwriter, immediately saw financial opportunity when he began experimenting with Japanese ingredients in 2009.
Umami Burger owner Adam Fleischman inside the Hollywood Umami Burger restaurant in 2011.
Umami Burger owner Adam Fleischman inside the Hollywood Umami Burger restaurant in 2011.Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
That year, he was on a quest to figure out why, exactly, Americans consume billions of burgers annually. The answer was umami, the taste of salts combined with glutamate, inosinate or guanylate. Prevalent in foods like tomatoes, sardines and dried shiitake mushrooms, it’s considered the fifth flavor profile alongside sweet, sour, salty and bitter — and it’s also in red meat.
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After visiting a local Japanese market, grabbing an assortment of ingredients and hucking them into a blender, Fleischman opened the first Umami Burger on South La Brea Avenue a month later, outlets reported. By year two, that restaurant alone was generating $2 million in annual sales.
The chain exploded, rapidly expanding by opening five locations in Los Angeles and another in San Francisco, where it served burgers on a shining bun that looked as round and glorious as “a bodybuilder’s oiled rump,” according to a doting review from the New Yorker.
“Our plan is to do a hub, with five, six, seven stores, and radiate out from there,” Fleischman told the outlet, adding that it had the potential to become as ubiquitous as McDonald’s. Competing chains like Shake Shack, In-N-Out and Five Guys were pedestrian, nostalgic, boring. Umami Burger, on the other hand, liked to do things a little differently. “We’re urban, avant-garde — that’s our niche,” he said.
FILE: The interior of the Umami Burger in Costa Mesa.
FILE: The interior of the Umami Burger in Costa Mesa.Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group via Getty Images
By 2012, Fleischman was at the top of the restaurant world. The same year that he was named a Game Changer by influential industry publication Nation’s Restaurant News, Fleischman co-founded his second breakout hit: quickfire pizza spot 800 Degrees, which would go on to franchise in Japan and across the Middle East. He also debuted meaty offshoot restaurant UMAMIcatessen in downtown Los Angeles, which planned to offer alcoholic slushies and modernized interpretations of deli sandwiches. According to Grub Street reporters, one of the items served at the market was “brainaise,” a strange, brown-colored slurry made from whipped pig brains.
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Gaining financial support from investors and endorsements from Hollywood celebrities, Umami Burger sounded like a success story about a scrappy entrepreneur with a unique culinary vision, and Fleischman’s 2011 sale of 50% of Umami to nightlife giant SBE left the founder flush with cash.
But amid this relentless expansion, problems began to arise.
Some of the first warning signs seemed to begin in 2014, when Fleischman brought his biggest new idea to a number of high-profile investors: ChocoChicken, a restaurant in LA that literally served fried chicken infused with chocolate. It was met with immediate skepticism by most and closed quietly after less than a year, though as recently as 2018, Fleischman has said that he wanted to revive the restaurant in one form or another.
Undeterred, the burger CEO planned a succession of other businesses, including Fat Noodle, a buffet-style noodle bar in San Francisco. But for reasons not made public, it was put on hold, according to Eater. The business’s license has been inactive since 2017, online records show, and is listed as forfeited.
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FILE: The exterior of the Umami Burger restaurant at The Camp at 2981 Bristol St. in Costa Mesa.
FILE: The exterior of the Umami Burger restaurant at The Camp at 2981 Bristol St. in Costa Mesa.Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group via Getty Images
According to dozens of court documents filed in the city, Fleischman — and other Fat Noodle associates — had been embroiled in a messy legal dispute dating back to about 2014.
The building’s landlord alleged that in 2015, “an unpermitted demolition” took place and rent payments stopped, legal documents say. Subsequently, the building’s owner sued Fat Noodle management. After a bench trial, the court awarded the landlord $1.4 million in 2021, and with attorney’s fees, that sum rose to $2.6 million. In 2024, the judgement was satisfied in full, court documents show, though they don’t specify the amount that was paid.
Attorneys involved in the case did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment by the time of publication.
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Around that same period, Fleischman also launched a bizarre, pseudo-scientific website called ContinuumPhysics.com, which aimed to revolutionize the restaurant industry through the excessive use of medieval fonts (like most of his projects, it’s defunct).
But there were other, more serious scandals that involved Fleischman.
‘Right now I have a man in my home, and it’s terrifying’
For years, the former CEO was known for his culinary endeavors, but that all changed in 2023, when Flash Shelton, a self-described squatter hunter with over 100,000 subscribers, posted a video on YouTube confronting the restaurateur at a widow’s home in the Hollywood Hills.
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“Right now I have a man in my home, and it’s terrifying,” the unnamed woman said in the video, adding that she had believed Fleischman’s past success would make him an ideal roommate.
However, according to the home’s owner, Fleischman, who had been living there for months, never paid her. When approached by Shelton in the driveway, Fleischman, casually dressed in flip-flops and shorts, told him that he was the real victim in the living arrangement.
“She never asked for rent, she never asked for a deposit, she never provided a lease, she never provided keys,” Fleischman said in the video. “Obviously, I’m not going to pay into something where I can’t even have a key to get into the place.” Both landlords and tenants have “responsibilities,” he told Fox News that year.
Fleischman and Shelton did not respond to SFGATE’s multiple requests for interviews by the time of publication.
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Fortress Investment Group, once a stakeholder, is no longer affiliated with Umami Burger, a representative told SFGATE via email. SBE also did not respond to requests for more information by the time of publication.
FILE: The logo for Umami Burger restaurant located at The Camp at 2981 Bristol St. in Costa Mesa.
FILE: The logo for Umami Burger restaurant located at The Camp at 2981 Bristol St. in Costa Mesa.Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group via Getty Images
Since 2007, Fleischman has been embroiled in multiple legal disputes ranging from breach of contract to small claims cases launched by former business partners. Despite attempts to jump-start new, chic locales in LA, they were short-lived: His Asian-inspired steakhouse, Slow Burn, lasted just three weeks after opening, Eater reported in 2022, and his cafe, Cold Cocked Coffee, which opened in 2018, is listed as closed.
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Fleischman left the Hollywood home in October 2023, Fox News reported, and today, his whereabouts are unclear.
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One thing, though, is for certain. “I have no regard for authority,” he told LA Magazine. “I never have.”