Nick Alvis and Scott Price to open Taste Kitchen

[L-R] Nick Alvis and Scott Price.

Months after the trio – Scott Price, Nick Alvis and Viktorija Paplauskiene – left Table 9 at Hilton Dubai Creek to join Albwardy Investment’s F&B arm, their first project, Taste Kitchen, is due to open in August at Mercato Mall in Dubai.

Taste Kitchen is a casual dining venue which will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, and will be family-orientated. Speaking to Caterer Middle East, Alvis said: “It’s a different side of the industry, so to speak. We had always been involved in fine dining restaurants and the concept is now a lot more relaxed.”

The restaurant already has its senior team on-board, and Alvis, Price and Paplauskiene have most recently been working on training. “We have a development and test kitchen, and we’re lucky to have that. We’re doing trial runs and inviting 15-20 people into lunch every day.”

He emphasised that even though the move has been from one end of the F&B spectrum to the next,other, the team is still concentrating on the fine print. “The amount of work that goes into everything is still really detailed. We have had to be relaxed on the service side of things. People have to feel like they can come in and understand the food.”

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The restaurant is described by Alvis as open and light, with a relaxed atmosphere. “We’ve always wanted to appeal to as many people as possible, and we want people to enjoy what we’re doing. Being a high-end restaurant, you do sort of limit the clientele. It should appeal to everyone in one way or another, this is what we’re hoping for.”

The brand isn’t stopping there; Alvis has confirmed there are more branches in the pipeline. He revealed: “Yes there will be more. We’re focusing on Mercato Mall first. We are really quite fond of the area; it’s a great location and it’d be quite nice to go down there and create a bit of interest in that part of town. We’re really looking forward to that.

“Things move so quickly over here; we’re focusing on getting this up and running and hopefully by the end of the year we should have two or three.”

Even though Alvis and Scott are now officially titled project managers, while Paplauskiene is operation manager, Alvis stresses they are all still extremely involved in the kitchen. “We’re still completely hands-on. We train the guys to run it in our absence because we’re opening other locations. It’s not just cooking, we now have different responsibilities.”