Young Strip Mall Restaurant Hit Kato Pops Up for Lunch at The Cannibal

West LA indie restaurant hit Kato is expanding (in a way). The upstart eatery is moving into a limited lunchtime pop-up run to test out its most popular dishes, but chef Jon Yao and team aren’t doing it at the slim strip mall space they currently call home: they’re landing at The Cannibal in Culver City.

The new move will put Kato inside the butcher shop at the Platform project, doing a limited service of dishes from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. five days a week (they’ll be closed Sundays and Mondays). It all starts tomorrow, and ends in early May.

So what can one expect to eat? There’s the fried chicken sandwich as pictured above, which got a ton of play the last time the Kato outfit threw a one-day lunch party at their dinner time space. You’ll also be able to snag a couple of donburi options, a pork belly bowl, and a number of vegetable sides, among other things. Everything is priced at $12 or less, and meant for grab-and-go or patio seating. One note: This means that The Cannibal’s usual butcher shop sandwiches will not be available for the time being.

The jump into an expanded lunchtime pop-up service comes at a perfect time for Kato, which is spreading its wings beyond their popular and critically-acclaimed dinnertime hours. Kato also just received a nod as one of GQ’s best new restaurants in America, so there’s never been a more prescient time to further get the fantastic Kato name out there.

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