The Bento Boxes from Chef Brandon Go of Hayato in Los Angeles Totally Blow My Mind | Bon Appétit
"Located inside Row DTLA in Downtown Los Angeles, this seven-seat restaurant is the obsessive, hands-on project of chef Brandon Go, who works 8:30 a.m.–1 a.m., five days a week, peeling shrimp for bento lunches by morning and washing dishes after elaborate multicourse kaiseki dinners at night. He assembles a 16-component, tasting-menu–style bento—packed in a simple blond wooden box and often booked a month in advance for $47—that features datemaki tamago (custardy rolled omelet), a sweet potato cube finished with light shoyu and brown sugar, smoky grilled Hokkaido scallops, chrysanthemum greens brightened with sudachi, Japanese eggplant simmered in dashi/shoyu/sake/mirin, sweet snow crab transformed into curdy, meaty tofu, crunchy-tender pickles, hunks of winter melon in gingery dashi, and miso-shellacked black cod skewers, among other meticulously prepared bites. Trained in Tokyo under exacting chefs like Takeshi Kubo and Hideki Ishikawa and shaped by years at his father’s restaurant, he launched intimate seven-seat kaiseki dinners that quickly sold out at about $200 a head while deliberately eschewing publicity; the result is intensely crafted, restrained presentation and layered flavors that devotees say feel both distinct and deeply harmonious." - ByElyse Inamine
