Tsuru Sushi expands to three London restaurants

10-Jan-2011 - Last updated on 10-Jan-2011 at 11:01 GMT

An artist's impression of Tsuru Queen Street

Tsuru Sushi, the two-strong London-based restaurant chain, is to open a third site at St. Paul’s as part of steady expansion plans.

The sushi and katsu specialist, headed by business partners Emma Reynolds and Ken Yamada, has taken the site of a former florist on the corner of Queen Street that it plans to relaunch as a 50-cover restaurant next month.

Designed by Design LSM, the Queen Street site will adopt a similar style to Tsuru’s two other locations at Bishopsgate and Bankside, but “with a twist”. It will also feature seating for an additional 50 covers outside.

Busiest location

Reynolds told BigHospitality that she expected the new venue to exceed the business achieved by the two existing restaurants, mainly owing to the large footfall in the area.

“Both Bishopsgate and Bankside are in developments where there’s not a lot of passing trade, so are more reliant on local workers,” she said. “The Queen Street site is on the corner of a busy main high street so we expect it to be our busiest site so far.

“We do have a few competitors in the area, such as Itsu and Wasabi, who have locations not too far away, plus a local Japanese canteen too.”

Reynolds and Yamada have appointed Israeli Etama Kahana as general manager of their new restaurant, and Kay Suzuki as sushi chef.

Steady expansion

Tsuru now expects to expand its stable by one site per year.

“We’ll concentrate on central London and think about moving west next year, but we want to get the location right and get a good team in there first. We want to do it relatively slowly for this type of operation, but ultimately get it right.

“When we expand in the future we may well take on a operations manager for the group, but for now both of us are handling the job.”

Tsuru first launched in Bankside in 2007, and opened its second restaurant in Bishopsgate in April 2010.