A restaurant chain with more than 30 locations around the UK is set to open in Nottingham. Rosa's Thai will be moving into the former seafood restaurant Loch Fyne, in King Street, following a makeover.
Rosa's Thai has grown rapidly since the first restaurant was founded in Spitalfields, London, in 2008 by Alex and Saiphin Moore. There are branches in York, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester and more than a dozen across London.
Chef Saiphin grew up on a mountain farm in Khao Kho, northern Thailand. When she moved to the UK with her husband, she started selling home-cooked meals at offices and markets.
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Each region of Thailand has its own unique style of cuisine and the food in Isaan, which Saiphin calls home, is synonymous with ferocious heat, punchy salads and fermented specialities. Diners will be able to look forward to specials such as glass noodle salad, a whole sea bass plaa style - deep-fried and spiced up with chilli oil, lemongrass, ginger and coconut milk, with a refreshing salad of mango, cashew nuts and red onion - and som tum sweetcorn, a play on the traditional papaya salad, with sweet, sour, salty and spicy flavours to make the taste buds sing.
An all-day menu will be served, with noodles, curries and stir-fries, and around 30 percent of dishes are vegetarian or vegan. Diners can look forward to starters of crispy prawns, sweetcorn patties, chicken satay, fresh summer rolls and honey-marinated pork skewers.
Drunken Noodles, a spicier dish than Pad Thai, doesn't contain booze but gets its name from traditionally being eaten at the end of a big night out. Green, red, panang and massaman curries come with a choice of chicken, slow-cooked beef, king prawns or vegetables and tofu.
Cocktails have a Thai twist. Boozy Lemongrass and Pandan Iced Tea, Pineapple Kaffir Lime Sour and Kopiko Espress Martini are on the menu.
An opening date has yet to be announced. Loch Fyne was boarded up at the start of the pandemic in 2020. There had been plans to reopen in a Covid-secure way but later staff were told it would be closed permanently. One of the city's oldest restaurants, it had been open for 30 years.
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