Hayato, seven seats behind a noren in ROW DTLA

Hayato is seven seats, one chef and one seating a night, in a signless room in the concrete corridors of ROW DTLA. The only clue from outside is a noren over the door and bamboo screens on the window. The chef is Brandon Hayato Go, who did sushi prep at fifteen at Koi, his family's restaurant in Seal Beach, and was behind its counter by sixteen. After college he went to Japan, worked in an izakaya, and decided sushi was only a small part of Japanese food. He studied soba, took sake courses, and trained under the Michelin-starred chefs Takeshi Kubo and Hideki Ishikawa. Dinner began in July 2018; by the spring of 2019 Bill Addison, in the Los Angeles Times, was calling it the city's next world-class dining destination. It now holds two Michelin stars.

Go's philosophy runs to six words: 'A restaurant is basically a person'. For about three hours he stands at the centre of the counter, between spells of deep concentration and moments when he looks up to explain a dish. The structure is kaiseki: extreme seasonality, a progression of techniques, ceramics chosen to suit the food. Addison's account of one spring dinner is the best description we know. It began with a welcome sip of sake in a small gold cup, then a clear dashi made from kombu that costs $150 a small bag and katsuobushi shaved on a tool Go imported from Japan, with Dungeness crab in the middle and two stems of mitsuba tied in a sailor's knot. Then Santa Barbara spot prawns, spring tempura of angelica bud and surf clam, nigiri, Hokkaido uni, grilled nodoguro, which Go calls the foie gras of the sea, a hot pot, and finally rice and fish from a polished copper pot with pickles, miso soup and roasted hojicha. By the end, Addison wrote, the counter is almost silly with exhilaration, and Go is handing out seconds, or thirds.

He buys fish from Tokyo's Toyosu market, choosing it from a vendor's photographs, and it arrives within a day. He has family in the trade there, too: a cousin at Toyosu.

The drinks are what you would hope from a chef who studied sake: a list of sakes and wines from around the world at a friendly range of prices, and a few beers. Go has said sake is something he wants to pour more of at dinner.

He has family in the trade there, too: a cousin at Toyosu.

In 2020 the bento boxes kept the restaurant alive. With dining rooms closed, Go sold them on the first of the month at 10 AM, and they went in about three minutes. 'There is absolutely no plan B,' he told the Robb Report. 'Everything I have is invested in the restaurant'.

Getting in is the whole sport. Seats are released once a month, on the first, for the month after, and a diner may book only once a month. Addison noted that a solo diner sometimes has the easiest time getting the seventh seat.

Why it impresses: because a dinner that hard to get, and that quiet, says something about the person who got it for you. And because, as Addison put it, for an instant 'everything else disappears'.

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