Meatless Mondays: Umami Burger

Take a little more transit and eat a little less meat — two things you can do to reduce your environmental impact. In this installment of Meatless Mondays with Metro, we take a look at Umami Burger’s three new Impossible Burgers.

Umami partnered with Impossible Foods in 2017 to bring a plant-based burger to their restaurants. With the success of Umami’s original Impossible Burger, Umami has decided to bring three new limited edition choices to their menus.

The new menu items include two options that are 100% plant-based from bun to bun, and one option that contains non-vegan cheese:

  • The Impossible VBQ includes a vegan bun, complimented with an espresso rub, smoky sweet BBQ sauce, coleslaw and thinly sliced jalapeno all topped with grilled onions.
  • The Impossible Trufflemaker includes a vegan bun, covered with a truffle fondue, truffle aioli, port wine and truffle glaze topped with curly lettuce and fresh tomato.
  • The Impossible Classic is made of a vegan bun with Umami house sauce and American cheese (non-vegan), topped with curly lettuce, onion, and tomato.

Also available is Umami’s original Impossible Burger, which comes with two patties, caramelized onions, American cheese, miso-mustard, house spread, dill pickles, lettuce, and tomato.

For the meat-lovers out there who like to see a little pink in their burgers, Umami offers the option to choose what temperature you would like your plant-based burger to be cooked — creating the illusion of biting into a real burger.

Inside the Impossible VBQ. Photo: Steven Arellanes.

I was fortunate enough to try all three of the new Impossible burgers (talk about food-coma) and the VBQ burger was hands down my favorite. To me it had the most flavors and the sweet and spicy combination was nicely balanced. The BBQ sauce also gave the burger a juicier texture. The biggest sell to me though was the coleslaw — I am a huge fan of coleslaw!

All four of the Impossible Burgers range from $13-$16. The three new burgers are only available for a limited time!

There are number of Umami Burger locations spread out across Los Angeles, the location I visit the most is in Los Feliz, off the Red Line Vermont/Sunset Station. Once you exit the station, walk approximately one-quarter of a mile north on Vermont Avenue to Hollywood Boulevard. You can view all other locations here.

If you have other recommendations for vegan/veggie restaurants, let me know in the comments.

1 reply

  1. Fatburger has the Impossible Burger for $9. The bun & mayo aren’t vegan. You should mention the Impossible Burger is GMO!!