LA's Kato named 2024's One to Watch

Kato in Los Angeles has been named the 2024 One to Watch by The World's 50 Best Restaurants in anticipation of the awards sponsored by S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna, which will take place in Las Vegas on June 5.

The Downtown LA restaurant, run by chef Jon Yao and sommelier Ryan Bailey, is described as an 'industrial- luxe' restaurant, and serves a modernized, elevated Taiwanese cuisine, reflecting Yao's heritage and background. The tasting menu of 12 courses includes dishes like caramelized sablefish with abalone and basil, grilled lobster with lobster toast and a sauce of roasted shells, and Dungeness crab custard with fish maw and crab vinegar.

The Kato team is committed to educating LA diners on the nuances of Taiwanese food culture and the restaurant utilizes the best local Californian ingredients. Now, with recognition from an organization like The World's 50 Best Restaurants, the spotlight will surely shine on Yao and his Taiwanese cooking.

Previously, Brazilian chef Janaína Torres of A Casa do Porco, São Paulo was named World’s Best Female Chef by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants in anticipation of the awards. Having only picked up the title of Latin America’s Best Female Chef in 2023, Torres has been recognized for her culinary talent, business acumen, and altruistic social work with the title of the best female chef on a global level just one year later.

Known as Lady Jaguar (Dona Onça), in her native Brazil, the chef opened her famed A Casa do Porco in 2015. Since then, the restaurant has garnered global recognition for its cuisine and inventive approach to Brazilian cooking. While a place at #12 on The World’s Best Restaurants list would certainly justify A Casa do Porco charging high-end prices, Torres has always been socially active and has decided to keep prices low to allow as broad access to her cuisine as possible.

Torres’ social awareness comes from her difficult background in central São Paulo, where at 11 years of age she was selling her mother’s clothes door-to-door. Later she came to the culinary world through her first venture—the bar Dona Onça and then training as a sommelier. She opened A Casa do Porco with her now ex-husband Jefferson Rueda.

With a relentless entrepreneurial spirit and a Midas touch when it comes to the culinary world, Janaína Torres is not only a role model female chef, but an example of a socially responsible businesswoman who uses her organic hotdog kiosk Hot Pork, ice cream shop Sorveteria do Centro, and accessible canteen Merenda da Cidade to regenerate and support her home neighborhood in central São Paulo. She works tirelessly to challenge machismo culture in the kitchen and to empower women both in the kitchen and in wider society. She has worked with local government to train school cooks and improve the nutrition of 1.8 million children by reducing processed foods in schools and replacing them with wholesome, nutritious ingredients.

Torres is an exemplar of an empowered female chef who creates incredibly delicious food, while serving the wider community in innumerable ways, a worthy recipient of the title of World’s Best Female Chef 2024.

This article was updated on 05/09/2024.