Bone Daddies, the informal Japanese restaurant concept created by Ross Shonhan, has signed a lease on a new site, MCA has learned.
The new raman bar in James Street, near Selfridges on Oxford Street, is expected to open by the end of the year. The group has secured the Café Rouge site in James Street, next to St Christopher’s Place.
The rock and roll themed restaurant is also due to open in the Nova development in Victoria this year, alongside the likes of Jamie Oliver’s Barbbecoa, Shake Shack, Jason Atherton and Franco Manca.
The two new additions will bring the number of Bone Daddies to eight, with chef-proprietor Shonhan, formerly of Nobu and Zuma, saying the group could grow to 10 or 15.
He said: “Before we’d opened the first one I wouldn’t have been able to tell you confidently I knew how to run every moving part of one restaurant. At that point I would have thought 10 or 15 would have been an incredibly ambitious target
“At the same time we’re not pushed by a private equity group which wants us to roll out and do one a month or two a month. We’re still a small independent group and we grow as and when it makes sense. We never use the term rollout because that scares me. Roll out I think is the same as sell-out.”
Originally opening in Soho in 2012, there are Bone Daddies ramen bars Old Street, Bermondsey and Kensington, as well as its Flesh and Buns izakaya concept in Covent Gardens, and the Shackfuyu pop-up in Soho which became so popular it was made permenant.
The James Street restaurant will showcase a different type of ramen noodles to previous Bone Daddies, though the menu is still in development.
Shonhan said there was plenty of scope to develop ramen in London, with awareness nowhere near as developed as Tokyo or New York – but he ruled out expanding beyond the capital for now.
“Many people in London probably haven’t had a decent bowl of ramen, so there’s definitely a market for it”, he added. “If I didn’t think there was I wouldn’t be opening another restaurant.”
Davis Coffer Lyons acted on the James Street deal.
