Yao was born in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley to Taiwanese parents and graduated in Anthropology from the University of California, Riverside.
He had worked at San Francisco restaurants Benu and Coi, and Alma in Los Angeles but had no formal culinary training when in 2016, at just 25 years of age, he took over the small space his parents had leased in a strip mall in Los Angeles’ Sawtelle neighborhood. Their intention had been to run a fast-casual takeout business, but Yao had other plans, turning it into the now renowned Kato, a fine-dining restaurant with a high-end tasting menu. Kato almost immediately garnered attention, thanks to an Eater reviewer who came in just two days after the restaurant opened.
As a self-taught chef, Yao based his cuisine largely on memories of his mother’s home cooking, with its Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, and Southern Californian influences, reinterpreted in line with his personal tastes.
A couple of years later, in 2018, he was recognized with a James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef semifinalist nod. Then in 2021—shortly before Kato moved to its current, considerably grander premises in Downtown Los Angeles—Yao won the California Young Chef Award, presented by the Michelin Guide in partnership with Sanpellegrino.
Restaurant
Named, somewhat quirkily, after a dog that Yao once wanted to adopt but never did, Kato began life in 2016 as an intimate 27-seat restaurant in a strip mall in the West LA suburb of Sawtelle, before reopening in a considerably more spacious venue in Downtown Los Angeles at the start of 2022.
The restaurant is known for Yao’s Southern California-influenced, nostalgia-tinged take on Taiwanese cuisine. This is expressed in his thoughtful, seafood-focused tasting menus which, since the reopening, are accompanied by an extensive wine list and innovative pairing options. (In its original location, Kato had no license to serve alcohol.)
Kato was awarded its first Michelin star in 2019, and Yao is open about his ambition for the restaurant to earn a second in due course. The original incarnation of the restaurant garnered the top spot in the Los Angeles Times’ 101 Best Restaurants list in 2019, and the current version headed the list again in 2023. It also picked up the coveted One to Watch award from The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024.
Recipes and dishes
Kato’s cuisine is full of the Taiwanese and Chinese flavors of Yao’s childhood in the San Gabriel Valley, where he was fortunate enough not only to have a mother who was a great cook but also to be surrounded by some of the US’s best Asian food.
Many of his dishes feature seafood, a reflection of Taiwan’s culinary culture. But his creativity lies in taking familiar recipes and giving them his own spin, sometimes assembling dishes from original combinations of ingredients, or focusing on a single well-known ingredient and building an entirely new dish around it.
One classic Kato recipe that signaled a turning point for the restaurant is a Chinese-style steamed fish dish, served with soy sauce and thin slivers of scallions. This was a staple in Yao’s home growing up, and its success with diners convinced him that revisiting the Taiwanese cuisine of his youth was the right direction for Kato. Another popular favorite is his adaptation of traditional Taiwanese three cup chicken, only in Yao’s version, the chicken is replaced by chewy abalone, which is steamed, smothered in jam, and garnished with Thai basil.
