Lloyd Carter Lloyd Carter

Lloyd Carter, executive development chef at Jumeirah Restaurants’ The Noodle House reveals exactly what takes a homegrown brand to international success

The Noodle House, the Jumeirah Restaurants flagship brand, is set to celebrate its 10th year of operations in May. Not only that, it has recently been awarded Superbrand status in the UAE, directors have signed new territory Morocco, and are on the brink of signing franchise rights for a “key European market”.

Its success is down to its fresh menu and ability to constantly evolve, says executive development chef, Lloyd Carter, who is responsible for delivering achievable menus for all of the Dubai restaurants and the international franchises.

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Having just arrived back from a trip to Thailand, Carter reveals that he spent three months travelling last year and stressed the importance of keeping close contact with suppliers and cuisine developments in the countries whose food you are emulating.

“We’ve spent a lot of time travelling to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam recently,” explains Lloyd. “It’s been for our new dim sum project, which we’re very excited about – we’ve been sourcing a supplier to provide dim sum for our restaurants here and internationally, and also for retail.

“We believe we’ve found the right partner who can replicate our signature dim sum,” he continues. “I’ve given them recipes we already use, and some new ideas, and we’ve then worked with them to make sure all their suppliers are to the standard that we require. Then we signed off the products and the recipes, so now the dim sum will be shipped in to us, and we can then ship them out to all of our partners.”

Forward thinking
Carter goes on to explain that it is a frozen product they will be serving, which will save greatly on food waste, while not compromising on quality.

“Everything is Individually Quick Frozen, so therefore the product stays as fresh as possible – they deliver as good as any fresh product. If we don’t sell a product we don’t have to throw it away. We try to utilise every bit of our ingredients and we have a very low wastage point,” he says.

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