Downtown’s ROW DTLA Adds Thoughtful Japanese Kaiseki Restaurant

Things continue to come together at ROW DTLA (more commonly known as simply The Row), Downtown’s massive mixed-use project with tends of thousands of square feet of retail and restaurant space to fill. The next newcomer is Hayato, a thoughtful Japanese kaiseki restaurant with a small footprint, aiming for some prime real estate on property.

Hayato is the work of Brandon Go, a Santa Monica-born chef who has trained for years under a number of greats over in Japan. His parents also run a sushi restaurant in Seal Beach, meaning Go has been in the restaurant business basically his entire life.

With Hayato, the hope is to bring true quality to the sit-down kaiseki experience. That means top quality fish, a gorgeous and mostly minimal interior, and the kind of limited seating that keeps overhead costs low while also providing a more intense and personalized experience.

To help defray the high costs of doing service and food at this level, Go will offer a casual bento box lunch to locals within at The Row. That includes thousands of freelancers, corporate types, and creatives who have taken over space at the complex, a suitable army of eaters that could basically underwrite the evening dinners Go plans to put on. With other restaurants coming in like Rapphannock Oyster Bar there’s no guarantee Go will earn a stranglehold on the lunch market at The Row, but it certainly seems like a great idea for the micro-neighborhood.

There’s no official timetable for Go to open Hayato at the moment, and he’ll be traveling a bit for more inspiration over the next couple of months. But build-out has already started — and other nearby projects like Paramount Coffee Project are underway as well — which means an opening in spring of 2017 is the current best guess.

Hayato
777 S. Alameda St.
Los Angeles, CA

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