A Korean pork cutlet shop in downtown Vancouver has closed, leaving the 20-year-old chain with just one location.
We spotted a closure notice on the door of Daeji at 519 Dunsmuir Street.
The handwritten note is signed by Judy, the shop’s manager, and it gets right to it: “Daeji officially closed on October 8th.”
“Thank you for being part of Daeji. We’ll miss you all,” she wrote, with the same message repeated in Korean underneath.
The shop had been up for sale for about half a year.
Now it’s over.
Through the window, the kitchen is already being packed up, with steel shelving, boxes and supplies stacked up.
This one had been around a while.
City business licence records show a Daeji at this address as far back as 2007.
Daeji is a Korean pork cutlet chain that got its start back in 2006.
At one point it had shops all over Metro Vancouver, including Broadway, Surrey, Metrotown and North Road, plus a few years on Robson Street.
Since then, the chain has been closing location after location.
With downtown gone, the Coquitlam shop on The High Street is the only one left.
The menu is all about comfort food.
The chain’s website lists its specialties as the Original Pork Cutlet with gravy, salad and rice, a Chilli Shrimp Pork Cutlet with spicy gravy, and a Pineapple Burger Steak, a hamburger steak topped with a ring of pineapple.
It also does chicken and fish cutlets, omelette fried rice and sweet and sour chicken.
For a lot of downtown office workers, this was a cutlet lunch a few steps off Dunsmuir.
Daeji on Dunsmuir joins other recent Vancouver closures like Legendary Noodle, Raclette Steak, and TheVenti Dunsmuir.
Address
519 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver
