Krazy Katsu co-owner Phillip Gonyea made the jump from home cook to restaurateur

BY BRANDON RODRIGUEZ

Name: Phillip Gonyea

Title: Co-owner of Krazy Katsu with wife Jessica Gonyea

Age: 46

Birthplace: Rice Lake, Wisconsin

Phillip and Jessica Gonyea’s Olmos Park restaurant Krazy Katsu has humble origins. The pair began making Japanese-style chicken sandwiches out of their home, which quickly became the talk of their neighborhood and evolved into a ghost kitchen. One day, as 150-plus cars lined up outside their front door for pickup orders, the pair knew they needed to expand, quickly. Last July, roughly a year later, Krazy Katsu was born. Within its first two days of service, the restaurant went through 1,200 pounds of chicken. Krazy Katsu is located at The Yard, 5257 McCullough Ave.

Can you describe those early day of working out of your home to me?

Some people say “home,” but officially it was a ghost kitchen — or more like a speakeasy for chicken sandwiches. Cooking out of the kitchen was tough. At first, it was my wife and myself. Then we brought on my brother, who’s a teppanyaki chef. Jessica was the glue that made everything work while I had to work my real-life job. She ordered all the product, shopped for the groceries, made all of the sauces, brined the chicken and was our original sandwich builder. She was literally a one-man show until the day of cooking and we had folks that would come in. It got to the point where we had five guys in the kitchen and three people delivering for lunch on a Tuesday. We had to be super clean and efficient because we lived in the space, and I didn’t want to be cleaning up all night, which is why I’m fanatical about keeping the restaurant clean. You’ll never see fries or flour, even panko on the floor. The cooking was way different in that we had propane turkey fryer platforms and 22-inch pans we’d cook in. And moving to a really nice commercial deep fryer is a game changer. We don’t miss cooking out of here at all! Jess will tell you, it’s nice to have a butcher process our chicken and a team to do what we used to do.

It is quite the jump from serving sandwiches out of your home to running a brick and mortar. What’s been one of the biggest challenges for you and your team so far?

We thought we were ready for the masses on our grand opening … we were way wrong. One-thousand-two-hundred pounds of chicken in two days was nuts. We had a skeleton crew and just tightened up our [boot]straps and cooked. Today we are much better. The process is streamlined, and we have key roles for each employee. Like everyone, the biggest challenge is hiring folks, but the guys we have know that we’re onto something and love what they do, and for the most part, they don’t mind the hours.

Many places tend to overcomplicate their menu offerings, but you stick to doing one thing well. What made you want to keep things so simple and straightforward?

We want to eventually grow and have multiple locations. We felt like the easiest way to do that is to keep the menu simple with several [limited time offerings] and have the katsu be the star of the show, with the sauces being the co-star. We play with other ideas often that are not katsu-forward, like we have a pandan smash beef burger now on Wednesday, and it’s doing really well. We’re reintroducing a couple rice dishes, orange chicken and teriyaki chicken. You know when you go to a burger spot, you don’t have a lot of items — several burger choices and variations — but for the most part, it’s beef on a bun and whatever else they want to top it with. We’re kind of the same.

There are nods to flavors from around the world on your menu. One in particular is the Korean ingredient, gochujang. How’d that end up on the menu? My three favorite foods are Japanese, Korean and Spanish. I love the funkiness and spice from gojuchang and thought it would make a great barbecue sauce. When developing it, I grilled with it and fell in love. I was making my own barbecue sauces, and people would buy them, so adding the gojuchang was a no brainer. It just made sense. We made a couple tweaks to taste better on a fried sandwich, and it’s been a top seller ever since. We’re in the process of mass producing several of our sauces for retail shelves and K-POP is one of them.

Could you talk about what drew you to katsu, the breaded cutlets that are the centerpieces of your sandwiches?

I grew up cooking katsu in my house. We’re Japanese — my mom’s from Okinawa and I’m the first born here. It’s my comfort food. On Sunday, we’d make a ton of tonkatsu [with pork] and eat it throughout the week. We’d get tired of eating it with rice, so we’d make sandwiches, faux cordon bleu, katsu parm and other Japanese foods like katsudon or katsu curry. It was a way to stretch the food. I feel like everyone has a katsu item now, and I’m not mad at it. Ours is different in that we brine it for a long while, 18-20 hours. We worked hard at the right brine and the right brine times for the size of chicken we have. Traditionally katsu isn’t brined, and the star of the show is the katsu sauce and the meal as a whole. We wanted the chicken stand on its own.

What’s the biggest compliment you can receive when it comes to your food?

I’ll never forget, there was a lady that came to the restaurant. She must have been in her 80s and looked like my grandmother. She was from Okinawa and ordered a sandwich and cucumbers. We brought her all kinds of stuff and she said, “This tastes better than Okinawa.” That was awesome for me. For us, we know you can go anywhere for good chicken sandwiches or just good food for that matter. We strive to be consistent on what we put out daily and also provide you with over-the-top service. When you look at our reviews, the food and service are what most people comment about.