Umami Burger and the Melt: Science Meets Fast Food with Muddled Results
By Jonathan Kauffman Wednesday, Nov 9 2011
The McRib, which zooms through the American media with the regularity of a lesser comet, is back again, trailed as always by a glowing cloud of hype and disgust. The McRib is the most delicious mass of sweet, molded pork parts ever concocted in Ronald’s labs! The McRib contains ground-up pig stomach and ammonium sulfate!
San Francisco, which has far more McDonald’s restaurants than it likes to admit, is now being colonized by two nascent fast-food chains that may be sidestepping the foodista loathing for processed food: Umami Burger and The Melt. The two are doing it with Earth-huggy claims, to be sure — good ingredients, compostable cutlery — but also with tech-geek-worthy backstories. The new chains’ McRibs? Burgers and grilled-cheese sandwiches. Re-engineered with science, of course.
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Thanks a million, Mike Rhode of ComicsDC, for doing my reading for me and providing razorsharp clipping service.
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