One of my weakness when it comes to food is burger and fries. I don’t what it is about them, but they always get to me… Among hundreds of burger joints in the city, there are few places that offers really excellent burgers. They might not be “cheap eats” but you will get quality. Umami Burger is one of those spots.

I visited their downtown location, located inside Brookfield place. On the second level, there is a section called the Hudson Eats, where many eatery stores are located. They have good varieties of restaurants, from burgers, bagels, salads, sandwiches, seafood, bakery, etc… Most likely, you can find something that you like from all these options.

The restaurants are lined up nicely, along the bright, clean space. I really appreciate them making it spacious enough for people to be able to walk around, while looking for the food of your preference.

Among these eateries, there is Umami Burger. It had lines of people, as usual, but they move quickly, as you order, get your seat, and go back for your food when it is ready. They have good selections of burgers, including Tuna, Turkey, and Black Bean.

 

We ordered our food and looked around for some seats. Another good thing about Hudson Eats is that they offer pretty good amount of seating everywhere. There was a very large eating space with a stage, where they had a live band playing music as well. If you want to be away from the noise, there were more secluded, quiet seating space alongside the back wall/window as well.

If you can’t find any seats, and if you don’t mind walking a bit, then you can always go back down stairs and eat there under the huge palm trees. No matter where, you will be able to find a seat somewhere in this place.

Since we were there for weekend Brunch time, we ordered Sunny Side ($14) and Manly ($13). The Sunny Side comes with parmesan frico, fried egg, truffle thyme compound butter, truffled arugula, and truffle aioli. I love truffle, burger, and fried egg, so this was a burger dream come true. The burger was beautifully constructed, as always, great just to look at. I could smell the truffle even before the first bite, which was great! It was a food porn with perfectly cooked egg, great truffle flavor in each bite without overpowering. Parmesan frico cracker added extra crunchy texture and nice cheesy flavor. Burger patty was cooked to perfection, super juicy and packed with flavor. The buns were soft, and it was a nice size.

 

You can see the size of the burger in the photo here. Pretty big, right? And yes, I was happy with my Sunny Side!

The Manly comes with house beer-cheddar cheese, bacon lardons, smoked -salt onion strings, Umami house ketchup, and mustard spread. Again, beautifully crafted. They had chunks of very thick bacon, which was amazing, impressive and flavorful. It was more like chunks of pork slab than a bacon. The string onions was tasty, lightly fried, added crunchy texture and flavor. The sauce was really tasty, super delicious.

Speaking of sauce, we also got ourselves a couple of their special sauces on the side. We got Umami Ketchup and jalapeño Ranch. Both of the original sauces were great, homemade ketchup tasted like how ketchup supposed to taste, and the ranch had nice flavor with nice kick to it from the jalapeño.

We also ordered a side of Maple Bacon Fries ($6). I was not sure what to expect from the name of this dish, but I can be adventurous (?) with food! It was sweet potato fries, with maple-braised bacon lardons, rosemary Aleppo salt, topped with chives.  And they were great, soft, sweet and flavorful. Good size to share among 2 people. Amazing flavor of maple with hint of bacon. It also had small chunks of bacon (or the pork slab) with the fries, with great maple flavor! It was so much more amazing than I expected, I was so happy we ordered it.

Even though the food is excellent in every way, unfortunately, I can NOT say the same about the service. The staff here were not friendly, cold, and rude… When we asked about their original sauce, we were told to “read the sign”… Seriously? The sign only indicates the name of the sauce, without description, so we wanted to know more about the sauces, in terms of flavor and such. But we decided not to continue with the conversation. Why bother talking to someone who is completely grumpy and rude? I hope they will get more staff who knows the meaning of “customer service” in the near future.

Umami Burger – Brookfield Place, 225 Liberty St, New York, NY 10281