Building the Burger Umami Burger Thousand Oaks

On a lovely evening, after shopping for some cooking gadgets and finding some great deals on my favorite large white platters, Brandon and I decided to get a bite to eat at the new Umami Burger in Thousand Oaks. I’m not really a big fan of going somewhere when it first opens, and partially this place and the way things were handled here, is part of the reason. Opening a new restaurant is never what you think it’s going to be.  You can plan your whole life and still, there are going to be some things that are just beyond your control to handle.

I’ve been to Umami Burger in Studio City with my sister-in-law Linh, and we had a pretty amazing time, and Brandon had been to Umami in Los Feliz, so we were familiar with the set-up, the way the menu was and all that other jazz. But at first glance, you could tell that overexpansion is probably going to be the downfall of this delicious burger. The Thousand Oaks location is less than lackluster. Its design and decoration is minimal and rushed. The intricate details of the Studio City location’s design and development of flashy red chairs and contrasting black and white accents, are completely overlooked here and it’s a very open-space place, which wasn’t very crowded, aside from the amazing amount of overstaffed workers, just standing around talking to one another.

Now I understand the idea of overstaffing, but if you’re going to do it when you first open, at least work it so that people are getting service, instead of one person having a huge section with no one else helping him, as he’s desperately running around, sweating and getting trampled on by numerous requests. Cue our server. The poor fellow was getting the runaround from everyone. We sat at our table for at least 10 minutes before anyone said anything to us or even made an attempt at helping us.  This is a common mistake that ill equipped management makes when hiring 16 year-old hostesses and showing them a map that they don’t know how to read. It’s not your fault, it’s your manager’s. Fortunately, our waiter was doing as much as he could, with the little means of help he was getting.

We were finally able to order and Brandon got the Truffle Burger and I ordered the Port and Stilton Burger. We ordered tempura fried onion rings and sweet potato fries, and chose the garlic aioli and Umami ketchup to compliment them. I also ordered a market salad. The salad came first and was the most salty, over-seasoned, little salad I’d ever had.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get anyone to take my salad back for at least 10 more minutes and had to flag down a hostess before anyone came by. After I had them re-make the salad with the dressing on the side, the salad wasn’t served first, but later accompanied the rest of our food.

Over salted salad and Condiments Umami Ketchup and Garlic Aioli

Undressed market salad

Tempura fried onion rings and sweet potato fries

Port and Stilton Burger

Truffle Burger

Whenever I go anywhere to have a burger, I almost always have to build it my own way. I love lettuce in my hamburgers and since I don’t often indulge in them, I like them to be memorable. This burger, on its own, was well made medium-rare and the beef has plenty of flavor. The onions were a bit on the light side, for being called port caramelized onions. The stilton was a sharp and delicious cheese that went well with the meat. The bun was fresh and soft, a perfect complement to the meat. So with my side salad, I decided to put about half of it inside the burger along with a tempura onion ring and the flavor combination was awesome. I enjoyed the whole thing, after it was built to my liking. Brandon’s truffle burger was well made, but the truffle was not very pronounced for us. We enjoyed both the onion rings and the sweet potato fries. Overall, our food was warm and delicious, with just a few preferential taste issues for our own palates.

Additions to Port and Stilton burger

We understand that opening a restaurant is never easy and there are going to be hiccups along the way. Our waiter was nice enough to address us with as much attention as he possibly could, but with ¾ of the restaurant empty, the managers should have been able to give this poor guy a hand. He would probably have made better tips. I like Umami, but if they keep popping up like McDonalds, they’re going to have more experiences not worth devouring.

Cheers

-Unrivaledkitch