Called Kauto, the new restaurant will open in the Clifton area of Bristol and will serve similar dishes to the Woky Ko restaurant at the city’s Cargo development at Wapping Wharf, including bao buns, spring rolls and noodle dishes.
Kauto, which is named after a champion racehorse, is split over two floors and has been designed to be different from the Cargo original. It will feature polished concrete interiors and muted colours and will have ‘the same casual dining ethos but with a Woky edge’.
New dishes on the launch menu include roast char siu with shallot ponzu; Korean fried chicken with ramen noodles, soy egg and umami broth; and clams, wild prawns and rice vermicelli noodles in a tom yum broth.
A cocktail menu has been created by Gary Roper of Wapping Wharf neighbours Little Victories. A new addition for the Kauto bar is a gin made in collaboration with Bristol distillery Psychopomp made with nashi pear.
Woky Ko was launched by MasterChef finalist Larkin Cen in 2016. “Woky Ko Cargo is the core of our culinary and cultural values and our Wapping Wharf base is still very much part of the business,” he says.
“Kauto takes on these values but in a different atmosphere and will enable us to show the breadth of a cuisine I truly love.”
The restaurant will open on 22 May and for the first two weeks will only be running a launch menu downstairs. The first floor will be fully opened after then, with further Asian dishes added to the menu throughout the launch period.