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

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