Last week was a busy one in the D.C. area for Tous les Jours. A day after soft-launching at Reston Row, the bakery chain began serving its signature French pastries and bread in Tysons.
The Tysons franchise opened Friday (Aug. 15) alongside Dumpling District in the first Virginia site of area restauranteur Zong Chen’s Luna Hall, a food hall that launched in D.C.’s Chinatown in 2023 and can now also be found in Wheaton and Ellicott City in Maryland.
According to Chen, the turnout for the first days of business at Luna Hall Tysons has been encouraging, especially given its somewhat unusual location on the ground floor of an office building at 8201 Greensboro Drive.
“The soft opening [has] gone very successful, especially for the pastries. It seems like the community really likes it,” he said in an interview yesterday (Sunday). “… We were surprised that by this area on Friday nights and Saturday night, we actually get busy during 5 to 9 p.m. We thought it might be only for office [workers], but it looks like the residents nearby are coming as well.”
Located in Suite 109, previously the home of the Indian restaurant Sapphire Tysons, Luna Hall is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Food hall mixes franchises and original concepts
A longtime resident of the D.C. area, Chen initially trained as a sushi chef before getting involved in franchises, starting with a Tutti Frutti frozen yogurt shop in Montgomery County, Maryland, where he grew up.
He has subsequently branched out to other brands, such as Tous les Jours, the Korean fried chicken chain Bonchon and Kung Fu Tea, while also developing his own concepts, including Dumpling District and the sit-down restaurant Takumi Japanese Bistro and Bar.
Given the variety of food and drink establishments he now owns, a food hall seems like a natural evolution for Chen, who says he was drawn to the idea because he wants to “create places for everyone to hang out.”
“Sometime, when we have a group of friends … and we ask our friend, where do we want to go grab a quick bite? It will be a pretty hard decision,” Chen said. “It’s like, hey, I want some Chinese food. But no, I want some Japanese food. Well, I want to go get a coffee. No, I want to get some dessert. I came up with the idea, let me make a food hall and have everyone just join and hang out here, like a cafeteria, but outside a mall.”
He admits to initially hesitating when considering the office tower at 8201 Greensboro Drive as a Luna Hall location, noting the expense of renting space in Tysons and his lack of prior experience opening a business in an office building. But he was able to negotiate “a good deal” with property owner B.F. Saul Company that convinced him to take the risk.
When the Luna Hall team was determining which concepts to offer in Tysons, Tous les Jours stood out both because it doesn’t have any locations in the immediate area yet, and bakeries have emerged as “a very hot sector” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chen says.
Originally started in South Korea in 1997, Tous les Jours now has more than 1,700 locations worldwide, and parent company CJ Foodville USA is aiming to open 1,000 stores just in the U.S. by 2030. In addition to the new Reston location, which opened last Thursday (Aug. 14), the bakery chain can be found in Chantilly, Centreville, Burke and Annandale.
With its opening in Tysons, Dumpling District is up to 10 locations, including one in Philadelphia, but this is the first in Fairfax County and only the third in Virginia.
Serving Shanghai dim sum, noodle soups and rice dishes, the eatery’s most unique menu item is the rainbow xiao long bao or soup dumplings, which lets diners sample six different flavors (standard pork, pork and crab meat, chicken soup, shrimp and zucchini, mala or spicy pork and black truffle).
During its soft opening period, Dumpling District is offering a buy-one, get-one special where customers who purchase soup dumplings can also get an order of pan-fried buns at no extra cost. The buns can come with pork, chicken or crab and pork as a filling.
The dumpling shop will have a grand opening in September with additional menu items and a full bar, according to a flyer.
More dining options coming to Luna Hall
In the coming months, Luna Hall Tysons is slated to add a full bar with alcoholic drinks, a boba tea stall that Chen says could be Kung Fu Tea or a new brand, Takumi, and Pelicana Korean Fried Chicken.
While most of the food hall is counter service, Takumi will be located in an enclosed outdoor patio with full table service and even a window for a sushi bar. First opened in Columbia, Maryland, in June 2024, the restaurant serves sushi, ramen and other Japanese cuisine.
Chen says they’re still waiting on permits from Fairfax County to allow construction on the patio, a process that he anticipates could take anywhere from three to six more months.
“When the patio is enclosed and done, there will be Takumi Sushi table service at the patio being vented, heated [and] covered,” he said.
In the meantime, the restaurant is also in the process of expanding to Arlington and the Navy Yard in D.C.
Luna Hall Tysons will be Chen’s first Pelicana franchise. Along with Korean fried chicken, the menu features rice dishes, kimchi pancakes, chicken gizzards, Korean-style ramen, budae stew and other side dishes, including salads as a counterbalance to an assortment of fried appetizers.
The South Korean chain’s Annandale location (4239 John Marr Drive) will close for good on Aug. 24 due to the impending redevelopment of the Eastgate Shopping Center, leaving a Rockville spot as the only one in the D.C. region until it arrives in Tysons.
Chen also plans to bring Top Pot, a Korean barbecue and hot pot chain, to Arlington’s Ballston Quarter in November, so he’s taking a cautious approach to any further expansions in Fairfax County. A developer has reached out, expressing interest in bringing one of the Luna Hall Group’s concepts to its buildings, but “nothing has been set in stone.”
“We will keep focused on these projects to make sure it is stable, and hopefully, there should be future potential of doing something else,” he told FFXnow.
