Chop Chop Leith is now up and running!
Our doors opened on 14th June and, helped by the glorious weather, have actually been full on ten of the twelve days that we’ve opened. We’ve received about 300 surveys back from our guests and, possibly fuelled by their no-corkage BYOB libations and slightly obliged by our £12 voucher bribe (although we ask them to remain impartial), we have registered 75 – 95% good or excellent ratings in all categories. Most guests have been very approving of our furniture and décor, our service and, obviously, our food. Room for improvement is mainly in the occasionally slower service – not surprising, really, when we are still getting used to serving four distinctly separate zones over a wide area with 70% of our staff being brand new. We’re absolutely delighted with the opening fortnight and look forward to pushing all our approval ratings up to 90%, which will come as our team settles in.
Sunday lunch saw the premiere of the Chop Chop Chinese barbecue. Although we have not yet advertised this feature, we had about thirty guests enjoying the skewers of lamb, chicken, beef, vegetables and toast with salad platters, all at our silly (low) introductory prices as we gauge what to offer and how much to charge. The surveys coming back were unanimously positive about this (first ever in Scotland?) culinary adventure. We will be holding these prices for another week or two.
Chop Chop Haymarket continues to thrive – the opening of our second restaurant has had little impact on the mother restaurant although it’s probably a little easier to book than it was, which was one of our aims.
In April 2009 we launched our Rewards membership, which took off immediately. We had a great Festival and, just as we thought things just couldn’t get better, there was Gordon Ramsay sitting at Table 7, loving the dumplings. In fact, he literally swore by them. Following the transmission of The F Word episode on November 24th, bookings went ballistic. (If you missed it, you can see the whole episode via 