'F' factor drives Chop Chop expansion plans

Published on Thursday 11 February 2010 00:06

A CHINESE restaurant whose award-winning dumplings featured on one of Gordon Ramsay's television shows has unveiled a major expansion drive.

Chop Chop is to open next door to Tom Kitchin's Michelin-rated restaurant in Leith, just months after featuring on The F Word.

The former Beanscene coffee bar at Commercial Quay will become the second Chop Chop following Ramsay's visit to the first, near Haymarket station, for his hit programme.

Chop Chop's owners, Roy King and his wife Jiang Wang, creator of the dumplings, are also seeking new premises in the capital for food production after seeing a huge increase in demand over the past few months.

The couple – who persuaded Sainsbury's to distribute the company's dumplings two years ago – is now hoping to tie up deals with other major supermarkets after seeing sales increase by more than a third over the past year.

But the duo will have to leave the industrial unit in the Gracemount area where the dumplings and other Chinese products have been produced for the past 12 years.

Mr King said: "We've been looking to open a new restaurant for some time, but things have really taken off after Chop Chop was featured on The F Word at the end of November. We got 50 bookings the night the programme went out and have been pretty much full ever since.

"Leith is a completely different catchment area from where we are in the West End, and it's a great spot next to The Kitchin and opposite the Scottish Government at Commercial Quay."