Haru Kishi’s Next Act: A Modern Kappo Counter Lands at Austin Proper

By Rebecca Thompson | Jan. 8, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Rebecca Thompson has held many jobs over the years, from daily newspaper writer to middle-school math teacher. As a restaurant critic, she’s reviewed everything from Michelin-starred fine-dining to gas station barbecue counters.

Austin chef Haru Kishi learned the first rule of restaurants before he learned the first rule of cooking. “A restaurant is more than food, it’s atmosphere, pacing, and care.”

Kishi learned this lesson on the floor at Tagawa, his family’s Japanese restaurant in Paris, watching how a room moves when it works and how it collapses when it doesn’t. The food matters, obviously, but the small details decide whether people come back.

That early obsession with flow is the basis for his latest project. On November 28, Kappo Kappo opens at Austin Proper Hotel as a modern kappo-style tasting experience from Haru and his twin brother, Gohei Kishi, built around a chef’s counter and a tightly composed progression of dishes prepared in front of guests.

Haru and Gohei Kishi

The space is a collaboration with designer Kelly Wearstler, and the space leans into sensory-first: charred cypress warmth, ceremony, an omiyage parting gift at the end. The point is not theater for theater’s sake. The point is control, and the kind of confidence that comes from doing the same thing correctly, over and over, until it looks effortless.

Chef Haru Gohei Kishi Kappo Kappo Austin

Kishi’s story starts with that between-cultures friction that tends to produce creativity. “I was born in Paris to Japanese parents, and my family’s story has always lived between cultures,” he said. In the mid-90s, his parents opened Tagawa, and he grew up Japanese in France, surrounded by French markets, bakeries, and the local devotion to restraint.

“Living in Paris also meant constant exposure to markets, bakeries, and French food culture, where quality and restraint are valued just as much as technique,” he wrote. At home, meals were “simple, seasonal, and intentional,” which is often where chefs first learn that discipline is not the enemy of pleasure.

Kishi began cooking professionally in Japan in 1995, then went looking for the kind of kitchens that do not let talent coast: under Joël Robuchon in Tokyo, and later alongside Gordon Ramsay at the Conrad Tokyo, then at Trianon Palace in Versailles. Kishi describes that era less as résumé-building and more as rewiring. Robuchon and Ramsay “pushed me to see cooking as discipline, repetition, and responsibility,” he said. “Once you internalize that level of expectation, it becomes part of how you think and move every day. At that point, it’s no longer a job. It’s an identity.”

In 2008, Ramsay brought him to West Hollywood to work at The London Hotel, where Kishi rose to executive sous chef. Two years later, he joined the Chaya group in Beverly Hills as executive chef, carrying what the bio calls a seasonal Euro-Asia palette shaped by years of living in both worlds and cooking in both languages. The through line is not fusion as a marketing trick. The through line is standards.

That is also how he talks about kappo. Where omakase is often understood as a narrow lane—fish, rice, precision—Kappo Kappo is designed to be broader and hotter. “Kappo Kappo is rooted in kappo tradition, which allows for a much broader expression than sushi or seafood alone,” he said. “Wagyu beef plays a central role in the experience, with cooked courses that highlight heat, texture, and technique.” The structure is “deliberately composed and consistent,” with raw and hot dishes unfolding at the counter, built to create “trust and connection beyond the expectations of a traditional omakase.”

And then there is the twin factor, running the restaurant with his twin brother, the two of them sharing the same vision taught to them early on. “We share the same foundation and standards, but we naturally focus on different details in the kitchen,” Kishi told me. “That balance allows us to move fluidly during service while staying completely aligned on quality and intent.”

If a tasting menu is a chain of small promises, Haru Kishi has built a career around earning trust, one course at a time.