For most Americans, breakfast looks like cereal, bagels, oatmeal, yogurt and fruit smoothies or the classic spread with eggs, bacon and pancakes.For Cindy Lam, a Chicago-born first-generation Cantonese-American entrepreneur, these options felt, in her words, “70-80 per cent” complete – a sentiment captured by the Cantonese phrase “chat chat baat baat” (literally “seven seven, eight eight”), meaning almost there, but not quite.The phrase resonated with her own sense of identity, too: caught between the traditions of her immigrant family and the mainstream American culture around her, forever navigating a space where neither side felt hers entirely.“I was caught between two worlds,” Lam says from her home base in Brooklyn, New York. “The breakfast options here never had the depth of flavour I grew up eating. It was always missing something.”Her craving for something entirely different in the morning turned out to be umami – the fifth taste – and she had to dig deep into her Cantonese heritage to bring it to the table.Cindy Lam, a first-generation Cantonese-American entrepreneur, launched Umami Granola on May 1, 2026. Photo: courtesy of Cindy LamOn May 1 this year, Lam launched Umami Granola, timed to coincide with Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, a deliberate choice for a founder who spent years in corporate America helping to lead Asian employee resource groups.