Arts District’s Lauded Yess Restaurant Hits the Reset Button After a Year

On June 27, Yess resumed with an a la carte food selection tightened to include the cook’s speculative and artistic strategy to “progressive” Japanese food. Food authors made eager observations regarding the distinct temple-like service featuring white-clad service team, with Conde Nast Vacationer keeping in mind the dish as “a meditation on restriction, where less is much more and components take center phase on the plate.

On June 27, Yess reopened with an a la carte menu tightened up to feature the chef’s artistic and experimental approach to “dynamic” Japanese cuisine. The dining establishment included an a la carte menu before transitioning to sampling food selections in early 2024.

For dessert, 2 kinds of kakigori come into play, one covered with coffee-whiskey syrup and dates, the various other featuring citrus-enzyme syrup with almond. The last essential meal, roast pleasant potato, raisins, and cacao, which completed the sampling menu, is no more there. Nevertheless, it could return in an all-new kaiseki-inspired omakase booked for 10 seats that will come later on this year. Yess’s previously revealed nearby cafe and a glass of wine bar, led by Giles Clark, must open by late 2024 or early 2025.

The new food selection at Yess still includes a sashimi of the day, smoked steelhead trout with baked walnuts, and braised pork tummy kakuni with grapefruit and mustard. Generally, the dishes feel tweezed from a high end izakaya, with grilled shishito peppers, silken tofu with salsa macha, and eggplant fritters, all valued under $20. Meals include a lobster katsu sando, smoked rockfish ready shinkei-jime-style (an approach in which the spinal cord is gotten rid of to lower rigor mortis) with pleasant pepper escabeche, and grilled pasture-raised tenderloin with fresh wasabi.

Some recipes, like temaki or rice spheres, expense under $15, while others, like box crab salad with Weiser Farm potatoes, can be had for up to $38. This provides the brand-new food selection the convenience of a community restaurant with some chances to shape the experience for more of a special event. That availability was key for Yamasaki, seeing that potential clients may’ve been persuaded by the higher entrance factor of a sampling menu.

The brand-new food selection at Yess still includes a sashimi of the day, smoked steelhead trout with baked walnuts, and braised pork stomach kakuni with grapefruit and mustard. The final elemental meal, roast wonderful potato, raisins, and cacao, which completed the tasting food selection, is no much longer there.

Matthew Kang
is the Lead Editor of Eater LA. He has actually covered dining, restaurants, food culture, and night life in Los Angeles since 2008. He’s the host of K-Town, a YouTube collection covering Oriental food in America, and has been included in Netflix’s Street Food show.

Yamasaki concerned Los Angeles by means of London, where he had operated Koya noodle bar, and opened Yess Aquatic, a seafood-oriented Japanese-inflected food truck. In April 2023, he opened Yess in a previous bank structure with delicate, locally sourced fish and shellfish and smoked proteins. The dining establishment included an a la carte food selection before transitioning to sampling menus in very early 2024.

In late April 2024, Yess shut after regarding a year of procedure to take a break and hit the reset button. After years of construction on the edge of Seventh and Mateo Streets in the Arts Area, the Junya Yamasaki-led dining establishment spent regarding two months reviewing its food selection and preparing to open its cafe area towards the back of the high-ceilinged building.