Chef Ishito grew up in a home located next to a Japanese high-class cuisine. A Japanese high-class cuisine is a different world where they prepare the best ingredients with expert cooking skills. As chef Ishito grew up watching those highly talented chefs, without realizing it, cooking became something familiar to him. As a student he came to the United States to study. As he graduated he went back to work in Japan, but he decided that working for a company is not his style and came back to the states. When he was still a student, he dreamed of living in the United States.
To make his dream come true, he thought of ways to make a living in the states and he immediately came up with the idea of becoming a chef. When starting his career as a chef, his part-time experience in dish washing during his school year helped out. During the first twelve years in the United States, he served in various restaurants to train his skills.
Even though he loved to cook, it was not an easy task for him to observe the experienced chefs’ cooking and learn their skills. He says that it was repetition of trial and error. In 1995, as he was training hard, he grew attached to California and decided to start his own restaurant. The first restaurant was located in Monterey Park but due to some works of fate, the restaurant is now located in Little Tokyo, part of Downtown Los Angeles. Chef Ishito cooks with a clean style. From the wide and open kitchen, you can observe all the diners.
This is because the genuine kappo style is to serve Japanese dish to the diners as the skillful chefs present their expert skills to them. There is no place for deception in the kitchen. The broth is made with honesty too. There is great amount of care put into the quality of water, which makes the broth that leads to all other dishes. To give the water a smooth sweet taste, it is filtered many times. The amount of care put into the water is also put into his cooking as well, so all of the dishes cooked by chef Ishito are creative and not bound to any trend.

His kappo dishes are made with amazing art of cookery based on his authentic Japanese sense, which values natural and seasonal harmony.

Japanese food culture focuses on seasonal ingredients, so all dishes served at the restaurant are seasonal specialty. These dishes are served with chef’s wish for diners to taste the best of seasonal sensation. Rather than being “served”, it feels more like you are being “entertained”.

Chef Ishito loves the United States. He wants the people of the states to enjoy the authentic Japanese kappo dish. You can see in his eyes, his determination as a single Japanese person, to spread the Japanese food culture.