Inside Houston’s Hotly Anticipated Omakase Restaurant Where Tokyo Training Meets Texas Swagger
Last fall, while dining at laidback Kata Robata in Houston, chef Manabu Horiuchi handed me a few pieces of his signature sushi: soft, lightly torched hamachi topped with a sunny side up quail egg and truffles followed by a hand roll layered with shiso, toro, a fat lobe of uni, and caviar. He’ll never take the bites off Kata’s menu. He can’t. The same goes for the restaurant’s Texas Kobe beef skewers and locally famous miso lobster macaroni and cheese.
“We have so many regular customers. People come to the restaurant and order the same thing,” explained the chef.
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This week, Horiuchi will introduce Houston to its newest set of hit dishes when he opens Katami, an omakase restaurant in Montrose. Though diners outside the city may not yet know Horiuchi, Katami will give the chef a high-end, high-profile platform for his only-in-Houston Japanese cooking.
Horiuchi opened Kata Robata 14 years ago, well before Houston had any kind of sushi culture, and rather than taking a precious rice-and-fish-only approach, he built Kata into a restaurant with something for everyone. Diners sit at his counter and eat $190 omakase just a few tables down from families with ramen-slurping kids.
Houston—including the city’s best chefs—loves him for it.
The night of my visit, Chris Shepherd popped into Kata to say hello. Felipe Ricci, executive chef at fine-dining March, was there too, eating a chirashi box and chawanmushi. Justin Yu makes it in at least once a quarter for miso soup, tempura, and Hori’s choice of eight nigiri, “as long as it includes an anago with sea salt and a squid with umeboshi,” says Yu of his regular order.
Benchawan Painter, who won the 2023 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Texas, goes with her husband to Kata every week after her trip to the farmers’ market. Her order: sashimi for two, fried spot prawn heads, fried fish collar, and foie gras-scallop nigiri, which she says, ”may be the most perfect bite in Houston right now,” she wrote me over the summer.
Horiuchi moved to the United States from Japan in 2000, and, after building Kata Robata into a critical and financial success, he didn’t plan on opening a second restaurant. But sitting uncharacteristically idle during the pandemic, he dreamed of one.
Katami means gift, or keepsake, in Japanese, and it’s Horiuchi’s offering to Houston—the city that made his career. While Kata, he says, has more rustic elements, Katami will focus on luxury dining. Guests can order a nine-, 12-, or 15-course omakase, plus à la carte sashimi, nigiri, makimono, and temaki. Eighty to 95 percent of his seafood will come from Japan, sourced through decades-long relationships, and flown to Houston within 20 hours of its harvest.
“We’re going all in on our sushi program,” says Horiuchi, who holds a license to prepare fugu, or puffer fish, and will serve the notorious fish seasonally. “I’m challenging myself to find another gear.”
Painter reveres Horiuchi’s cooking for this clear throughline to Japan. “After eating around Tokyo, Kata is the place that most brings me back to Japan. I feel so inspired as a chef when I go there because chef Hori and his team execute everything the same way, every time, and it is perfect,” she says.
Yes, Horiuchi has reverence for craft and sourcing, but he’s no traditionalist. His style synthesizes his training at Tokyo’s historic, Michelin-starred Sushiya Ginza Honten with, well, Texas swagger. “When I first started, I was more conservative in my style and approach, very traditional,” says Horiuchi. “But as I opened up to new methods and tried different ingredients, I created some of my best dishes.”
Plus, his Houston customers adore more-is-more creations like his Texas hamachi roll with fried Gulf shrimp, spicy tuna, yellowtail, yuzu, jalapeños, and salt.
“The country and Houston, in particular, should be excited to have someone who’s so dialed into the Gulf Coast but also has an eye towards Japanese cuisine,” says Yu. “I’m excited for Hori san to have a chance to build his kitchen from the ground up and have a full and round conversation about his reverence for old techniques but with an eye for progressive, new, and exciting food that he may not have had when taking over for Hue—Kata’s predecessor—all those years ago.”
Horiuchi gives the impression that he’s having more fun than most of his omakase peers.
Over the summer, he flew to Tokyo to eat and reconnect with mentors, and on the trip, he was inspired to develop menu items modeled after menchi katsu, a pork and beef meatball, plus okonomiyaki, which, at Katami, includes corn and mushrooms. His A5 Wagyu program features beef from the Miyazaki, Hokkaido, and Kagoshima prefectures. The ultra-premium Kagoshima beef is available via pre-order, and Horiuchi serves it tableside, cooked with hot stones, Shabu Shabu-style; as an uni-topped carpaccio; and marinated in sweet-umami-packed yakiniku sauce and grilled.
Guests can order caviar service and a foie gras PB&J. For dessert, he’s importing ice from Japan to make kakigori; the pure water, he says, translates to a fluffier shaved ice, which he tops with green tea, strawberry-nutella, or “rainbow” flavors.
On the beverage side, Katami will focus on premium sake, with nearly 70 labels, including a rare barrel-aged bottle from Kojima Sohonten, a brewery founded in 1597. In addition to by-the-glass selections and sake pairings served in hand-cut Edo kiriko glasses, they’ll have 1.8-liter bottles for celebrations and large groups. Japanese whiskies, though highly allocated in the state, will be on hand too—neat, in highballs, and mixed into Old Fashioneds. Horiuchi, a self-professed “wine guy,” also worked to make sure there were quirky bottles and reserve-level wines (DRC, Cristal, premier cru Chassagne-Montrachet, etc.) to pair with his cooking.
“Katami is letting Hori expand his creativity,” says Shepherd. “I can’t wait for our city to see him break out of his shell.”
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