DOZO, the first brick-and-mortar spot from the food truck team behind Katsu Kart Sando Shop, will be coming to a food stall at The City Kitch at 2200 Thrift Rd.
Owner and chef Perry Saito and his sous chef and managing partner John Gamble are aiming for a Sept. 10 opening for the new Japanese restaurant.
About three and a half years ago, Saito — who is a fourth-generation restaurateur — opened Katsu Kart to serve sandos, Japanese-style sandwiches.
“The original mission was to show a lot of the underrepresented parts of Japanese cooking and cuisine,” Saito said. “You’ve got a lot of ramen, you’ve got a lot of sushi, but you don’t see a lot of the other things that make up the diversity of Japanese cuisine.”
Saito plans to continue this mission of bringing underrepresented Japanese cuisine to the Charlotte area at the new location. It will be a small 12-seat food stall where customers can expect Japanese comfort-style food, partially inspired by dishes they workshopped on the food truck.
Saito said that some of the dishes featured in Katsu Kart’s weekly features — dishes the team added to the menu when they wanted to try out a new concept — are likely to pop up on DOZO’s menu. He also said sandos will continue to play a part in the brand.
Saito said he and Gamble are looking forward to the opportunities that having a brick-and-mortar space will provide for expanding their brand. However, they do plan to keep the truck going, though it likely will not be active as they settle into their new space. Customers can expect to see the Katsu Kart back out on the road in 2025.
“We’re going to get a bit of stability for our business and have a ground-level home base for us that we can branch out from with the truck, with catering and whatnot,” Saito said. “The biggest thing is we can finally expand on a lot of the ideas we’ve been working on. For me, it’s an opportunity to get back to cooking in a nice environment and catering to people in a space that is intimate and [provides] a way to really connect with people in the community.”
