{"id":772504,"date":"2026-07-19T18:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T18:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/772504\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T18:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T18:44:09","slug":"once-thriving-burger-chain-hangs-on-at-las-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/772504\/","title":{"rendered":"Once-Thriving Burger Chain Hangs On at LA’s Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n A Southern California burger darling that once drew long lines and celebrity praise now survives in a single, much-maligned airport outpost. In SFGate’s look back<\/a> at Umami Burger, Ariana Bindman traces how the “fifth taste”<\/a> phenomenon that helped turn founder Adam Fleischman into a star of the 2010s fast-casual boom. “We’re urban, avant-garde\u2014that’s our niche,” Fleischman told the New Yorker<\/a> in late 2011. Eventually, however, “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,” Bindman writes. The eatery soon devolved into a shuttered chain with a dormant Instagram, a glitchy website, and one remaining location at LAX saddled with a low online rating. \n <\/p>\n


\n Bindman details how a splashy sale to nightlife company SBE, and a string of increasingly odd ventures\u2014from chocolate-infused fried chicken to a noodle concept mired in a multimillion-dollar landlord dispute\u2014came with Fleischman’s more personal troubles. Those include multiple legal fights and a viral 2023 YouTube confrontation<\/a> in which a Hollywood Hills widow accused him of squatting in her home, an allegation that Fleischman disputed. Investors have since distanced themselves, and most of his later restaurant projects fizzled quickly. “Today, his whereabouts are unclear,” Bindman notes. For the full rise-and-fall saga, and how a once “avant-garde” burger brand collapsed into a cautionary tale, read the full piece here<\/a>. \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Southern California burger darling that once drew long lines and celebrity praise now survives in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[19176,79498,2356,19527,101201,20846,3031,329656,31641,74,329655],"class_list":["post-772504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-airports","tag-burger","tag-california","tag-chain-restaurants","tag-hollywood-hills","tag-lax","tag-los-angeles","tag-restaurant-chain","tag-southern-california","tag-technology","tag-umami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}