Kato, a Michelin-starred tasting menu spot in Los Angeles, represents intersecting immigrant communities throughout town, particularly within the San Gabriel Valley, the place chef Jon Yao grew up. The 2025 James Beard Award winner for Finest Chef: California prepares two tasting menus in his DTLA restaurant: a seasonal eating room model and shorter menu within the bar.
First, Yao preps his recreation of Zī Rán Yáng, a cumin lamb stir fry dish from Northern China, with thick slices of aged lamb saddles cooked over a fireplace and dusted with Kato’s cumin spice mix. Slightly than hoping for diners to have that Ratatoiulle second, the place the chef has created a dish that completely encapsulates a meals reminiscence from their childhood, Yao says he needs “them to really feel some sense of nostalgia no matter what background they arrive from.”
A day at Kato begins with morning sous chef Jivani Roldan prepping the dashi, a Japanese fish and kombu (dried seaweed) broth, by painstakingly shaving petrified skipjack tuna, cooking down the broth, and double straining it. Yao and Roldan verify on the handfuls of air-drying quail within the walk-in fridge, which Yao jokes is similar measurement as Kato’s former kitchen in West LA. These quails are dry-aged, cured in a single day, and air-dried for a couple of days earlier than being coated in a maltose bathtub, lacquered in a sugar combination, and evenly smoked earlier than dinner service even begins. Yao believes all these small particulars within the strategy of prepping these dishes “compounds” to create one thing extraordinary.
Govt sous chef Alan Thau preps the crab, pulling all of the meat out of the steamed shells with tweezers after which shining a black mild over the crab meat to completely verify for any shells. These crab shells are toasted within the oven and added to hen inventory, recreating the style of shark fin soup, a delicacy in China and Southeast Asia, with out having to make use of shark fins. Dry-aged sablefish can also be prepped, minimize down into 50 gram parts, and marinated in bitter cabbage and mustard inexperienced broth, giving it a fermented taste.
Two hours earlier than service, parts of every dish are meticulously laid out on trays for Yao to style, so he can be certain that every sauce, custard, glaze, and prepped ingredient is prepared for service. The kitchen has a whole turnover earlier than service, with Yao speaking by means of any changes to the menu and visitor’s dietary restrictions earlier than the frenzy of plating the primary course.
Yao describes the 11 to 12 course menu as having “pits and peaks all through,” with loads of starches and protein-filled programs all through the meal. The quail is bathed in sizzling oil and baked within the oven and the sablefish is grilled and cooked within the fireplace, earlier than being plated. Diners leaving Kato mustn’t solely really feel satiated however “happy with their heritage,” Yao says. “That’s the great thing about superb eating proper now. You get a variety of completely different tales and visions and opinions and views. It’s not so homogenous.”
Watch the newest episode of Arrange to see how Yao and his staff at Kato put together crispy lamb, succulent quail, and seared sablefish at one of many hottest eating places in Los Angeles.
