After a dustup with a microinfluencer a couple weeks ago over his new restaurant, chef and restaurateur Luke Sung may also be stepping away from or closing his popular, 17-year-old sushi restaurant Domo.
What began as a fairly common bit of tension between an established SF chef and a Gen Z TikTok influencer whose following he didn't find too impressive, blew up into a broader indictment of that chef's arrogance, and resulted in him stepping away from the restaurant for good.
That restaurant was KIS Cafe, which just opened two months ago in Hayes Valley, and it's not clear whether chef Luke Sung had an ownership stake there or what (though that is what was originally reported). The onetime James Beard Rising Star nominee and owner at nearby Domo Sushi reportedly left voluntarily and was not "fired," according to owner Eric Lin — and oftentimes when a new restaurant opens with a well known chef consulting on the menu, the ownership structure is never really known to the food media, or willfully obscured for publicity's sake.
The restaurant at 609 Hayes Street is reportedly reopening under a new name and concept at some point soon.
But the restaurant that Sung definitely owned/owns in the neighborhood is Domo, which opened back in 2008, after Luke Sung and wife Kitty had already established themselves with Isa in the Marina, eight years earlier. Domo opened with a friend of the Sungs as executive chef, Blowfish Sushi alum Kuo Hwa, though it's not clear if Hwa still works there.
On Saturday, a handwritten sign went up on the front door of Domo saying that Saturday, August 2, would be the restaurant's last day after 17 years in business. A Redditor posted a photo of the sign, and the Chronicle subsequently wrote about the closure — noting that they spoke to staff members on Saturday who seemed unsure whether the closure was actually happening.
Sung has not commented on this closure, and no notices have gone up on the restaurant's Instagram, as happened with the KIS Cafe closure a week earlier. SFist could not reach the restaurant by phone — there was no voicemail and no one picking up — and Yelp still shows the restaurant having a four-star rating, with no notice of a closure.
A second Redditor, kjc99d, subsequently reported that he'd spoken to a member of the kitchen staff at Domo, and they said the restaurant would only be closed for two weeks, had changed owners, and would reopen as a sushi restaurant. Will it keep the name Domo? That is unclear.
The entire incident highlights how cancel culture appears to be alive and well when it comes to the food world, which had its own reckoning with toxic (mostly male) chef behavior in the pre-pandemic years. Fallout from those scandals, which primarily had to do with sexual harassment of female employees, led to an upheaval and closure at SF's Tosca Cafe — when owner Ken Friedman became embroiled in a scandal that shut down his New York City restaurants. That restaurant ultimately opened under new owners led by Anna Weinberg in 2020.
Another dustup involving a TikTok influencer late last year led to the departure of chef Geoffrey Lee from his roles at Ju Ni, The Handroll Project, and The Hamburger Project, after he went on the attack on social media platforms against a female influencer who'd given a middling review of the latter venture.
The most recent incident with KIS Cafe primarily benefited influencer Karla (@itskarlabb), who said that after her tearful video about her encounter with Sung, and getting booted from his restuarant, she gained over 100,000 new followers.
Photo via Yelp
