The founders of Rosa’s Thai, Alex and Saiphin Moore, have secured the former ‘coronarium’ Starbucks site at St Katherine Docks for the launch of their new Chinese-inspired noodle shop concept Hoh Sek.
It will open in June as a grab and go focused site by day and restaurant by night.
Alex Moore told MCA he will be taking on the role of chairman, with Saiphin to be head of food. They have also appointed a managing director to lead the operation – Bernard Toomey. Moore said he became friends with New Zealand-born Toomey during his time in Hong Kong, and that while Toomey has experience in the F&B sector, he is first and foremost an entrepreneur, which is what he wanted.
“It is very much an investment for us, but I will help steer from afar,” he said. “I think it has got the potential to scale, but like Rosa’s we want to see what it’s like and test it in its format. We are doing this as a bit of an experiment and as a labour of love.”
Moore said he was very proud of how they built Rosa’s and “doing it again does appeal”, but there are no agreements in place with the group’s backers TriSpan about expanding it further than the one site. “We will roll it out if it works and if we want to,” added Moore.
He explained that Saiphin had wanted to launch the concept for years, but they decided to wait until they had taken a step back from the day to day operations of the Rosa’s. He used to use the Starbucks as an office when he and Saiphin first moved to the area, so he was very familiar with the location.
The name for the concept had originally been Slurp, but the IP had already been registered by another company so Moore said that name “got shot down”. “We also wanted to differentiate it from the Rosa’s offering. It really is more of a Chinese noodle shop, so we felt giving it a Chinese name was right,” he said.
He described the concept as a modern edgy Asian approach to noodles with a bit of London style and really authentic broths. The main daytime menu will feature the Saiphin Six – six main noodle dishes and will be tweaked with the addition of more sides in the evening. “The food will be presented in a different manner and the whole environment – the lighting and music, will change,” he said.
The restaurant will also be charging higher prices for its evening dishes, which Moore admitted could be a challenge, but said the evening experience would be “so much more” than in the day time.
There will be minimal seating downstairs during the day, but in the evening the restaurant counter will be flipped over to be used as additional seating, combined with seating upstairs and the outside area facing the water.
The circular ‘coronarium’ site was originally built to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, before it was converted into a coffee shop.
