I CONSIDER THE REASONS against naming Brandon Hayato Go’s tiny tasting-menu restaurant No. 1 on this list. The cost is $350 per person, without taking into account the deep, persuasive list of sakes and Champagnes. And Go serves only 35 customers a week; a reservation means phone alarms, compulsive browser refreshing and longed-for cancellation notifications. Few will have the opportunity to enjoy his food. Yet, if I’m asked to pinpoint the single most transcendent dining experience in Los Angeles — the restaurant that meets, even exceeds, its own impossible aspirations — this is the place.
There is no fourth wall at Hayato. With seven diners seated along a cedar counter, Go and his small crew stay in continuous motion for several hours, composing more than a dozen courses. Washoku (a broad term for traditional Japanese cooking) and kappo ryori (in which the chef prepares a series of refined plates in front of the customer) inform his style of cooking. The meal’s structure loosely follows kaiseki, emphasizing varied cooking techniques served in ceremonial order. Whether Go has bound together scallops and corn in the laciest summertime tempura or steamed the sweetest fall Hokkaido crab, whether he’s grilled rockfish and lotus root to a smoky copper sheen or presented a lacquered bowl of dashi with an orb of shrimp that’s equal parts snap and silk, the quality of the seafood is profound.
Go began working at his father’s sushi restaurant in Seal Beach when he was 15. He’s been cooking in front of people for nearly 30 years. He can be at once immersed in his tasks and disarmingly relaxed. He tells funny travel stories; people lob out random questions about his favorite places to eat in Los Angeles. Bottles of wine may be shared among customers who arrived as strangers. By the time there are seconds (or thirds) of black cod and rice, followed by muskmelon and matcha for dessert, the group can be almost slaphappy from elation. It’s happened at each of my handful of meals at Hayato, this dinner-party-ofthe-gods moment Go creates without forcing or staging a mood. I drift into the night always with the same feeling: That was some serious food, but that was also a seriously fun evening.
• 1320 E. 7th St., Suite 126, Los Angeles, info@hayatorestaurant.com, hayatorestaurant.com
Chef Brandon Hayato Go, above, is making a big impact from a tiny restaurant with dishes such as shrimp shinjo with matsutake somen, top, and black cod saikyoyaki rice pot with mitsuba.
