A late-night fire at a downtown Danville strip mall has shut down one of the Bay Area’s top restaurants specializing in tonkatsu, or Japanese-style fried pork cutlets.
Jungdon Katsu first opened mid-pandemic in 2022 as a tiny ghost kitchen takeout operation in Emeryville. Almost immediately, the shop’s juicy, preternaturally crunchy pork cutlets gained a loyal following — the San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez called them “exceptional and satisfying” in a rave review. Last year, owner Joyce Kim opened the larger, sit-down version of the restaurant in Danville, sharing a space with Taru Sushi, the sushi spot she’d run at that location with a business partner since 2016.
Jungdon and Taru were two of the several businesses that closed indefinitely after the Oct. 20 fire. Reached by phone, Nicole Kim, the owner’s daughter, tells KQED it’s unclear whether the Danville restaurant will ever be able to reopen. Even though the Jungdon space wasn’t caught in the blaze, the whole building suffered so much structural damage that there’s no way for customers to safely enter the restaurant.
“Luckily, no one got hurt,” Kim says. “It just feels really weird because my mom worked really, really hard to get to this point [for it to be lost], all because of this stupid fire.”
The exterior courtyard at Jungdon’s Danville location. (Luke Tsai/KQED)
For now, she says, her mother is trying to stay positive. Even before the fire, the Kims had already started working on building out a new full-fledged restaurant in Emeryville, at 6485 Hollis St. — a process they’re now trying to fast-track so they can open in the next month or two. Kim has also started a GoFundMe campaign to help tide the business over during this transition — and, especially, to support workers at the Danville restaurant who now likely have to find new jobs.