Happy belated birthday again babe! For Vince’s birthday, I made reservations to Kato, a One Michelin star restaurant located in THE ROW building in LA. Kato is an omakase-style Japanese-Taiwanese fusion restaurant that has been talked about by Vince’s favorite podcasters. He actually tried to take me here for my birthday a few months ago but didn’t couldn’t get reservations so we sat at the bar. (Only had two bites but it was so delicious and impressive that I was determined to book reservations for Vince’s birthday so that we can try the whole meal). No regrets there! It is $225 per person but worth every penny. This is one of the few restaurants where I can say confidently I loved EACH course. Vince was not disappointed either!
There were options for wine pairings but we opted to order cocktails instead. Vince got the GREEN SWIZZLE (matchbook distilling wall flower rum, rum pere labat 59 and la clandestine blanche absinthe swizzled on crushed ice with Korean cucumber, lime cordial and citrus fern). It was very refreshing and light, slightly sour & sweet. My drink to the right was the JULEP (2002 Paul anheuser riesling, tequila ocho reposado, avua amburana cachaca and amaro nonino swizzled on crushed ice with Helena apricot, black vinegar, almond & lime). I felt like a kid again with my makeshift ice cone at the top and fascinated by their reusable wooden straws.
There are 12 courses total and above are already are top 3 appetizer yummy bites. From left to right:
DUNGENESS CRAB. Soy preserves, doubanjiang. This bite doesn’t look like much (and it’s hard to focus on the small hairy toppings), but it tasted very crabby. The doubanjiang is a Chinese spicy fermented bean sauce. The entire bite had freshly peeled crab hidden underneath. One of my favorite bites of the entire meal!
SWEET SHRIMP. Nori, rice. In the middle, we have our sweet shrimp bite, which is nested on a very crispy and crunchy seaweed wrap. There is some rice underneath. The shrimp is completely dressed in a sweet sauce. Almost tasted raw too. Reminds me of the raw Thai sweet shrimp.
CHICKEN LIVER. Shallot, stone fruit. Last of the bites was the chicken liver. I will always appreciate chicken liver because I love liver! The texture of the liver was like a very smooth paste, like pate!
BLACK THROAT SEA PERCH. Tomato, shiso. Our fourth course was a very refreshing & light tomato dish. Lightly topped with the shiso leaf.
CAVIAR. Celery, corn, milk bread, garlic. The most enjoyable course for me was this one because I got to have their milk bread and butter again (I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the milk bread and butter that I had for my birthday. It was just the most delightful moment in one of my bread memories! The milk bread was so light and milky.
Interesting fact: their butter is cultured butter from Normandie, France. The chef likes cheese so he got cultured butter which is like cheese. It is just so hard for me to describe how the butter was.. It was very smooth and buttery.. You just have to try it!
The nice little dish of corn topped with caviar was my favorite course of the entire meal! We were actually supposed to eat this before the bread & butter, but also tried putting some of it on the bread as suggested by our waitress. The corn reminded me of cream of corn. The generous spoon of caviar added a light salty taste. The small little horizontal slices of corn was cute and reminded me of sunflowers. I’m not sure what the light dribble of green oil was but it added to my bite nicely.
SHOCHU SOUR. Iichiko saiten shochu, saleres gentian aperitif and dolin blanc vermouth shaken with sugar cube melon, lemon & calpico. This was Vince’s second cocktail and I loved this cocktail! Why wouldn’t I? It has cantaloupe melon (which is another name for the sugar cube melon) and calpico! Very light melon taste.
SEA URCHIN. Iberico ham, brown butter. I loved that I get to have this bite again! We loved it so much last time for my birthday that we had two bites each of this! I personally felt like there was less uni than last time, but maybe my memory is bad. Still delicious little donut filled with uni and butter on the inside while topped with that nice little salty Iberico ham from Spain!
GOLDEN EYE SNAPPER. Ginger, negi. This is the first of our two fish courses. Each fish was very tiny, but deceptively full! The snapper was cooked perfectly: very tender, flaky, soft. The skin was sticky on top. Negi is Japanese long green onion. It is sitting on a bed of lightly sweet sauce.
TILE FISH. Fish fragrant sauce, Szechuan peppercorn. I have never heard of tile fish before but apparently it is a fish most commonly compared to lobster & crab and live near the coral reefs. The fish was extremely tender and soft and flaky. Its skin was cooked to such a light and airy crispy that it was unimaginable! Crispy and light yet not poking the insides of your mouth. It sits on a thick sweet sauce that reminds me exactly of Vietnamese “ca kho.” This was nostalgic.
DUCK. Menegi, duck sausage. First of the two meat courses. To the left we have our duck egg roll topped with young green onion shoots. To the right we have our duck that came from Liberty farms. Our waitress described to us that this duck is the best quality duck you can get in the entire country! It was extremely tender and flavorful.
A5 WAGYU. Beef tendon, sour Chinese mustard. For an extra $45, you can get the Japanese A5 wagyu course. You can’t see from underneath, but that is about 1.5 inch width by 2 inch length by 0.5 inch thick wagyu. According to our waitress, this is a much larger cut than usual and we are lucky. I do feel lucky because from my experience with eating Japanese wagyu at other restaurants, this is a generous size for $45. As to be expected, extremely fatty but flavorful. Right on top is the sour Chinese mustard and then the rice cracker on top for the difference in texture.
MANGO. Yogurt, sesame. The torched whipped cream on top is very light and airy. It is a nice pillowy bed that sits on top of a dense cake with sweet, tangy mango ice cream.
BOBA. Boniato yam, cheese. Our chef had described that at the end of a meal, he would enjoy waiting in line and getting boba with friends so he made the last dessert course to be a fancy play on boba. Underneath you have bigger size chewy boba topped with a light cheese cream? And twirled cookies that is so soft when broken into by the spoon.
For Vince’s birthday, the chef gifted us a dark chocolate cake with coffee ice cream topped with caramel and sea salt. It was a very dense, sweet and bitter bite (from the coffee). Delicious, delicious! The coffee ice cream was so strong and packed of real coffee flavor! (Less milky). The sweetness of the dark chocolate contrasted nicely with the salty sea salt.
And finally, as a take home little treat, a sesame cookie!
It is just one cookie but it is packed with black and white sesame seeds AND full of sesame flavor throughout the dense, chewy bite. I’ve never had a cookie like this before and absolutely enjoyed it. Thank you Kato!
Even though all of the courses seem tiny, they were so filling!! We were so full before the wagyu course even! We were lucky enough to be seated near the open kitchen and was able to observe the chefs. Vince even recognize the Head Chef Jon Yao working and putting final touches on all the plates! It is also a nice little treat to see the chef at a restaurant you’re a fan of. I would definitely go back! 🙂
The parking structure at THE ROW provides first 2hr free. With validation from Kato, each additional hour is just $2.50. Not bad! Very cheap for LA covered parking. The service was very nice and attentive. Each time we went to the restroom we went back to brand new cloth napkins. The bathrooms were very clean yet dark. In the ladies room, there were ginger chew candies, tampons, mints, floss! I’m sure the gentlemen’s room had similar things..
We are definitely coming back to eat here again and absolutely recommend it to all our friends! 🙂
