The restaurant’s interior is calm and minimal but at the same time homely and welcoming. The cool qualities of steel, glass, and polished concrete are offset by the natural warmth of wood furnishings and soft lighting. The open kitchen with its wood-burning stove sits center-stage, creating a focus around which stylishly dressed cooks and servers silently circulate to a smooth soundtrack of soft R&B and indie music. The walls display artworks by local Asian American artists, reinforcing the restaurant’s proud allegiance to both the San Gabriel Valley and the Asian American diaspora. For those who fail to secure a coveted dining reservation, there is also the option of one of the seven seats at the bar, which offers a limited menu of light bites to accompany the extensive list of drinks.
Kato’s self-taught head chef and co-owner Yau was born to Taiwanese parents and raised in the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California, home to the largest Asian American population in the country and many fine providers of the diaspora’s cuisine. His culinary experience prior to opening Kato in 2016 was limited to stints in a few restaurants such as Alma in LA and Benu and Coi in San Francisco. But when his parents’ plan to run a fast-casual takeout business from a small unit in a Sawtelle strip mall fell through, he felt ready to take on the lease and launch his fine-dining restaurant. Kato quickly gained a reputation for its beautifully presented, Asian-influenced tasting menus, which gradually evolved to focus increasingly on reinterpretations of the dishes Yao’s mother cooked for him as a child. He was rewarded first with recognition from the James Beard Foundation as a Rising Star Chef semifinalist in 2018, and then in 2021 as winner of the Michelin Guide’s California Young Chef Award.
Kato received its first Michelin star in 2019 and took first place in the Los Angeles Times’ list of 101 Best Restaurants the same year. It returned to the top of that list in the 2023 edition, following the restaurant’s move and expansion in 2022. More recently, Kato won the One to Watch Award associated with the 2024 edition of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Kato continues to impress diners with its innovative but nostalgia-tinged expression of the Asian American culinary experience.
