A popular South Wales food stall serving Japanese-inspired street food located on the lower floor of Cardiff Market has unveiled the exciting news that it will be relocating to a larger space not too far from its current abode - upstairs on the market's balcony.
Tokyo Nights was founded by Oliver Bryant in April 2020 with its first permanent stall opening in the Goodsheds in Barry the following August before expanding to a second venue in Swansea's Founders & Co. Since its inception, Tokyo Nights has been a regular trader at food festivals - catch it at the Forest Feastival in September - and restaurant pop-ups up and down the country, and in February of this year, it brought its "Japanese soul food" to Cardiff Market. Its current permanent shops are found in Founders & Co in Swansea and the market.
Now, Tokyo Night's has revealed that it will be adding another into the mix, taking over the formerly known C.L.J Electrics, which was owned by "market legend, Clifford Jones", who worked in the market for over 70 years before he passed away at the age of 85 earlier this year.
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Oli, Tokyo Nights' founder says of this expansion: "We’re really excited about this next step for Tokyo Nights. We’ve loved being part of the market since the beginning of the year but the space we currently have has been the limiting factor. The stall upstairs gives us the space to do a full menu like we’ve done previously in Swansea and Barry and we can’t wait to share that with our guests in Cardiff!
"We want to showcase our products and how we make them so guests and passers by will be able to see us making the gyozas, prepping our chickens and cooking our Katsu curry sauce. We’ll also be bringing our awesome Tonkatsu Sando which I think the people of Cardiff will love! We’re going to be working really hard as there’s quite a bit of work to do to the stall but we want to be open at some point in October."
Announcing the news on Instagram, the food stall revealed their next step alongside a picture of Oli in his new surroundings: "NEW SPACE, " it wrote. "We are incredibly excited to get our hands on this fantastic stall upstairs in @cardiffmarket1891. It's massive, full of character, lots of seating and will allow us to have the menu we've been desperate to show you since opening our smaller stall downstairs. More on that soon."
Acknowledging the stall's iconic history, it added: "We're also aware that this stall was an incredibly special place to a market legend, Clifford Jones who worked here for over 70 years from the age of 15 but sadly passed away in May. We can't wait to find out more about Clifford and his stall and can only hope for the longevity that he had within the market.
"Over the next few weeks/months/years? we'll be busy working our dumplings off to get the stall ready for opening, and we'll be posting regular updates of the progress. We can't wait!"
While there's no opening date set in stone currently, food businesses of the market and fans of the stall were quick to offer their congratulations to Tokyo Nights for this new venture coming soon.
Fellow street food trader Cosmos Mexicana wrote: "Congratulations. Very exciting", whilst Ffwrnes and Kelly's Record, which also reside on the market's balcony floor, commented: "you’ll have lovely neighbours there too ;)" and "Welcome to the balcony".
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