Inside the Kitchen: Seven Questions with Hayato’s Brandon Go

I want the classic Japanese meal. Grilled fish, perfectly cooked white rice, miso soup, and pickles. “Ichiju-sansai” is the term for the classic meal of rice, one soup, and three side dishes. Typically, the three side dishes are composed of one protein, usually fish, and two vegetable dishes. If I were to choose one meal to eat every day for the rest of my life, that’s what it would be.

I think all of my best food memories are traveling in Japan and Europe with friends when I was in my early 20s. Everyone takes pictures of food now, but back when I was still using a disposable camera, most of the pictures that came back from the developer were of food. Everyone thought I was a weirdo for paying to develop blurry pictures of noodles.

I used to think of fine dining as something very grand, like a white tablecloth French restaurant, but when I think about fine dining now, I think more about the level of attention that each guest gets. There are places that may be very rustic or have humble food, but if the staff is extremely focused on taking care of each individual guest who comes into the restaurant, that still feels like fine dining to me. If the staff is seriously thinking about who is coming for dinner, that’s more of an indicator to me of a special restaurant than how much work is spent on each dish that the kitchen puts out.

I don’t have any big ambitions left for Hayato. If I could relive my recent work weeks over and over for the rest of my life, I would do it. I don’t take anything for granted in a restaurant anymore. I feel like I am cooking pretty well, I’m still healthy, the ingredients are as good as they have ever been, the staff is all doing a great job and they’re all on an upward trajectory with their own cooking and service goals. If this team can come to work like this every day, there’s no drama, the team is happy, there’s almost no limit to how much of my own effort I will put into doing this day after day. I am enjoying work more now than at any other time in my life.

There are a few places left in Japan that I am dying to go to, mostly tiny places. People laugh when they hear that I can’t get reservations at these restaurants because Hayato is not easy to book, but I have been trying to get reservations at some of these places for over five years. To me what is special about these little restaurants in Japan is that it’s not really a business, it’s a person. These restaurants are so difficult to book because every single night someone is there pouring their soul into serving a handful of people. When you finally get into these types of restaurants, because everyone who works behind a counter works so differently, it’s captivating. I also think it’s extremely undervalued. People know it’s special, but I don’t think they really think about how truly valuable it is. If Alain Ducasse worked 16 hours a day, stood behind a counter and personally cooked for ten people a night, what do you think you would have to pay to experience that?

I am not trying to put my own stamp on the food here. I want the taste of each dish to be the clear, unadulterated taste of a perfect ingredient. We do a couple of technical dishes every day, but at the end of the day, a turnip tastes like a turnip, crab tastes like crab, abalone tastes like abalone. Our goal is to make the turnip into the flavor and texture of turnip that you remember when you think of a turnip. When I am eating with my father and he talks about food, he always tells everyone at the table his memory of the best version of whatever we are eating. “The best oyster I ever had was…” I think listening to that my whole life had a very strong influence on me.

My comfort food is white rice. I’m picky about rice, but if I can have a decent bowl of rice, I am happy just eating rice and pickles. I would rather have a perfect bowl of white rice with an umeboshi (pickled plum) than almost anything else that’s conveniently available around me right now.