The Chinatown diner known as Pork Chop House held a soft reopening Saturday with a lion dance ceremony. A full reopening is set for Monday.
The New Lun Ting Cafe at 670 Jackson Street held a soft reopening Saturday, June 14 — the first day customers could walk in since a vehicle crashed into the storefront in late March, killing a man who had been delivering carpet to the building and damaging the space badly enough to require months of structural repair. A full reopening is planned for Monday, June 16.
The Chinatown restaurant, registered with the City as a business entity since 1987 and known among regulars as the Pork Chop House, marked the occasion with a lion dance from the Jing Mo Athletic Association. The interior has changed in one visible way: the booths many longtime customers remembered are gone, replaced with tables. Roast pork and beef tongue remain the signature draws, according to NBC Bay Area, which first reported the reopening.
The crash that shut the room down involved a 76-year-old driver who was allegedly attempting to park. He has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, pleaded not guilty, and is scheduled for trial in September.
The family-run business drew neighbors Saturday who described it as one of the last affordable, long-running places in a corridor that has shed comparable spots over the decades. NBC Bay Area reported it as one of the longest continuously owned restaurants in Chinatown. That provenance — nearly four decades under the current corporate entity, and what the family describes as a century of connection to the neighborhood — helps explain why the Jing Mo association showed up with a lion to mark the reopening, not just the regulars with their standing orders of roast pork.

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