Adam Fleischman, Umami
By Leslee Komaiko
For dineLA.com
First let’s get one thing straight. Adam Fleischman is not Japanese. Nor does he have a Japanese wife or girlfriend. He just likes umami, which is the name of the sharp little burger spot he opened on an unlikely stretch of La Brea early last year. Since then, the Maryland native has opened Umami Burgers in Hollywood, Los Feliz and Santa Monica. And there are more on the way, as well as a French-Vietnamese restaurant and a pizza joint. Not bad for a first time—make that second time (Fleischman owned Bottlerock in the early days)—restaurateur.
What brought you to Los Angeles?
I wanted to pursue some kind of liberal arts type job. I did some film work: enough to see it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I decided to segue way into something I am more passionate about like hospitality.
Was anyone in your family in the restaurant business?
My mother was a caterer. She got me my first restaurant type stuff. But I wasn’t that interested in it until after college when I got into wine.
So you worked in restaurants in high school?
I worked with my mom in some of the restaurant-catering stuff.
I sense something other than love. Did you actively dislike it?
I would say I actively disliked it.
But now you’re in the business.
Once you can create your own place it’s a lot more exciting. This was like paying your dues, drudgery work.
Are you a decent cook?
Yeah. I am the chef at Umami. I am a very good cook.
How many restaurants do you have now?
Like ten. Only four are open. The rest are under construction. We have three different concepts: a pizza place, Red Medicine and Umami.
I know a little about Red Medicine but hadn’t heard about a pizza place.
We have an offer in on a place right now. We’re looking at Westwood. We look for underserved markets. There’s not a lot of cool stuff there.
And you’re opening an Umami in the San Fernando Valley?
At Ventura and Laurel Canyon.
Upstairs where Loteria is?
There’s no upstairs in this building.
Was there a restaurant there before?
Yes. It’s where Outtake was.
That’s really close to The Counter. Are they ticked off?
I guess they are ticked off. We see ourselves as different. This will be a nighttime Umami, a swanky one in a beautiful Hollywood regency style, very sexy, with a full bar.
We try to make ‘em different. We’re not trying to do a cookie cutter concept.
And there was a rumor about you opening Downtown.
We’re going to open Downtown at some point. We’re working on Manhattan Beach right now. We’re also working on stuff out of town in San Diego and San Francisco.
Is Umami taking over the world?
We’re always going to stay small, at least small compared to McDonalds.
And Red Medicine is opening any day now.
It got delayed.
Because of permitting?
Yes.
Tell me about the restaurant.
It’s French Vietnamese. There are a lot of Vietnamese places that are hole in the walls. This is chef driven. He’s comfortable enough to do his own style.
But no one’s Vietnamese right?
We’re all white. It’s like punk Vietnamese. We’re kind of twisting it.
And who is the chef?
Jordan Khan. He’s worked at Per Se, The French Laundry and Alinea. He’s the best young chef in America. His talent goes beyond anything.
Was he working with you before?
We met at Star Chefs early in the year. He was looking to do Red Medicine. It’s his concept. He needed funding. We just got together and did it. I found the space.
So you’ve opened four restaurants in less than two years and you’re about to open several more. Yet according to other chefs and restaurateurs it takes years to open a restaurant.
They’re going about it wrong. Most restaurateurs are pretty clueless. We have a good business sense. We’re fast. We know what we want.
Is it just a matter of having money?
We don’t even have any money, at least we didn’t a year ago. I did the original Umami burger on La Brea for $40,000. We did over $2.5 million the first year.
You hear about restaurants spending $500,000, even a million, to open.
We don’t ever spend that kind of money. We do it ourselves and get creative.
We know how to save money. We look for spaces that are distressed and we just work with it.
You make it sound easy.
It’s not easy. You have to hustle.
So let’s talk more about Red Medicine. It’s on the edge of Beverly Hills yes? Beverly Hills seems like a weird restaurant market.
Not for long. Everyone’s going in there (once they saw the trucks and how well they are doing). Two of the best restaurants in L.A. are doing projects right around there. [Fleischman isn’t naming names.] It’s super hot. That and Westwood will probably be the next top markets. Beverly Hills is underserved. There’s a bunch of Italian places and a bunch of mediocre stuff, not a lot of great high end stuff, not cutting edge stuff. You have the density to do something there.
And you’ll do lunch and dinner?
Lunch and dinner until 2 a.m.
Going back to Umami, why did you decide to do a burger thing?
It wasn’t a burger thing. I wanted to work with umami. I wanted to work with the foods that had a lot of umami and burgers and pizza have the most.
Can you give us a quick primer on umami?
People think it’s abstract, like the fifth sense. It’s an actual taste composed of glutamates. It’s the savory taste. People crave umami.
How did you know about it?
Through chefs in Europe.
Were you hanging out with these chefs?
They talk about it in cookbooks. One is Fat Duck. Alinea they talk about it a lot.
Was the learning curve steep when you opened Umami?
Not on the food side. In operating a restaurant it was. It took a while to be very fluent in business mechanics. I had been working on raising money since the wine bar days. It’s hard raising money in this economy, almost impossible. It’s easy for me now, once you have a hit.
Do you just go back to the same people?
For Umami we can get money from anyone. We have serious cash flow. For Red Medicine I put in most of the money myself. It’s hard to get the first one off the ground.
I have a touchy question. If you go online, you find a thread about lackluster customer service at the various Umamis.
I think most of those are from last year. We get almost no complaints about customer service: maybe like two a month. And we serve thousands.
Have you made a concerted effort to improve customer service?
Absolutely. All the issues stemmed from the fact we were so busy. It was hard to give people good customer service. Now that we have more people in place, that seems to have alleviated a lot of it. We’re not trying to please every single customer. We serve stuff medium rare. We don’t do substitutions.
Can you get your burger medium?
We can do it.
But the question is not asked.
It’s not asked.
Can you take stuff off?
Yes. But we don’t mix up different burgers.
I know you’re not Burger King. But what about, “Have it your way.”
It’s not that type of concept. We’re people who spend a lot of time and research on burgers. If you have to have customized stuff, we say go to The Counter.
Do you literally say that?
No. But we don’t do substitutions. I think there’s a huge shift towards what we are doing. I’ve been to four restaurants in the last month that said no substitutions. At The District, they say substitutions allowed on February 29. The Animal guys don’t do substitutions. Voltaggio doesn’t. The big chefs are not doing substitutions. Not that we are their caliber.
Do you get customers who take this badly?
Occasionally yes. We’re totally sympathetic when people want it their way but it’s not what we do. We’re trying to do a fine dining set up.
Change of subjects. I love your pickle plate.
We started making pickles and giving them out at the beginning. We do like fifty different pickles. It changes every week. We do watermelon rind, okra, cauliflower, all kinds of stuff.
Who is your competition?
I don’t see us as having any competition. I think we created our own category: fine dining fast food. The closest thing to us is In-N-Out: owner operated, big on quality. They are geared towards a completely different market.
What do you think of In-N-Out?
I love it. Obviously there are limitations when you’re serving a dollar burger we don’t have. They don’t do any medium rare stuff.
Because their meat’s not good enough?
No. Their meat is good enough. But they’re doing these ultra thin patties. Ours are thicker, engineered so we can do them medium rare.
Let’s talk about the biggest burger news: Nancy Silverton’s new place in the Farmers Market.
Her burger is a totally different style. Ours is based on the In-N-Out griddling method.
Why griddle?
Most burger aficionados prefer that method, like nine to one. You get a better sear.
And presumably more fat stays in the burger.
That’s right. It bastes it. You keep more of the burger and juices in when you griddle it.
What are some restaurants you return to?
Cube is one I really like on La Brea. It’s underrated. Great chef and the best cheese in town. Animal. They’re one of the perennial top ten. They’re always busy. A lot of them are gone: Walter Mansky at Church and State, Michael Voltaggio. But he’s opening his own restaurant. I am very excited for that. I’m excited for Red Medicine. I’ll probably be eating there every night. Other than that, Totoraku on Pico, a private restaurant.
Do you think Los Angeles is still number three behind New York and San Francisco in terms of restaurants?
My basic feeling is that LA is the best city to eat in, not on the fine dining side. They have great street food also. But ranking in terms of everyday eating, L.A would be number one. In terms of flashy restaurants, you’ll do better there. We can hold our own on the fine dining side. I definitely think those are the three best restaurant cities however you rank them.
Umami La Brea, 850 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, 323.931.3000
Umami Hollywood, 4655 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, 323.669.3922
Umami Urban, 1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd., #7, Los Angeles, 323.469.3100
Umami Santa Monica, Fred Segal, 500 Broadway, Santa Monica, 310.451.1300
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