Why Café Isan needed the right hotel partner to expand

Founder Lisa Knight tells us about the Time Out Dubai award-winning restaurant’s new venue.

I’ve heard people say that street food and hotels are a bit like chalk and cheese, but we want to change that perception.

The main objective for us when looking for a space for the new venue was to find a hotelier who understood that the Café Isan brand is all about good value. This is our first licensed premises so we had to match the alcohol prices with our excellent-value food.

For us, good value has always been at the core of our brand and we don’t plan on changing that.

Staying honest as a brand is important, and that manifests in so many ways above and beyond working hard to keep prices fair. In some respects, we’re rookies who do things a little differently. We do as much as possible ourselves. For example, we’ve never used F&B consultants, we handpick and train passionate cooks from scratch and even recruit from within the family.

We’ve also managed to grow without investors, which enables us…. Read more over at Hotelier Middle East