The Verdict
KATO holds two Michelin stars at Row DTLA for Jon Yao's Japanese-Californian tasting menu - the most critically significant Los Angeles fine dining achievement of the past decade, whose specific synthesis of Japanese technique and California produce communicates a culinary vision that is neither wholly Japanese nor wholly Californian but a genuinely new expression that only a Taiwanese-American chef working in Los Angeles could have developed. The specific preparations whose Japanese technical precision is applied to the California seasonal ingredient environment communicate a kitchen whose cultural identity is built on the productive tension between two culinary traditions rather than on the comfortable resolution of that tension into a single style.
The tasting menu at Kato reflects Yao's specific creative approach: the Japanese technique applied to California produce whose specific character the chef's knowledge of both culinary traditions allows him to navigate at a level of sophistication unavailable to practitioners of either tradition alone; the specific flavour combinations whose cultural synthesis communicates genuine creative intelligence rather than fusion-as-novelty; and the counter format whose intimacy allows Yao to communicate the specific intent behind each preparation directly to the guests whose engagement he requires.
Two Michelin stars at Row DTLA for a Japanese-Californian tasting counter that has established the specific cultural synthesis its chef represents as a serious and permanent contribution to the Los Angeles fine dining landscape - communicating that the most significant new direction in the city's culinary evolution is not a new technique or a new ingredient but a new cultural identity.
Why It Works for Impressing Clients
Kato's two Michelin stars and Yao's Japanese-Californian synthesis communicate to clients with genuine food knowledge that the host has chosen the Los Angeles restaurant that represents the most culturally significant and the most critically acclaimed new fine dining achievement available - the restaurant that the city's most serious food community considers the most important address of its generation.
Also in Los Angeles
Explore the full Los Angeles restaurant guide. See our Impress Clients, First Date, and Close a Deal occasion guides for curated picks across Asia.