BLACK SHEEP RESTAURANTS CELEBRATES TEN YEARS

Celebrating a decade of Hong Kong’s most compelling hospitality movement

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[HONG KONG, 15^th June, 2022] This September marks a decade of Black Sheep Restaurants, defined by ten years of tireless resilience and tenacity, championing community, telling beautiful stories through food and creating extraordinary experiences for guests. For this Hong Kong-born hospitality team, it is a landmark occasion, a testament to the grit and perseverance, the uncompromising pursuit of excellence, and the immeasurable drive that has woven them into this city’s social and cultural fabric. Planting a flag in the place they call home, Black Sheep Restaurants has redefined the dining landscape in Hong Kong. They introduced a new wave of dining experiences, propelled by the can-do attitude hardwired into their bones and the collective determination in the community to drive forward as part of this city’s story for decades to come.

In true Black Sheep fashion, the entire summer is becoming a celebration and everyone is invited:

• Founders Syed Asim Hussain and Christopher Mark invite you to raise a glass with them to kick off the summer of celebrations. All guests dining from 13 to 22 June will receive an anniversary drink on the house to thank them for being part of this adventure and circle back to the start where all the stories and ideas, both the good and the bad, that shaped Black Sheep Restaurants began – with a drink in hand.

• In addition, the hospitality juggernaut will be gifting ten lucky diners their next birthday parties. From 27 June until 4 September one guest each week who dines at a Black Sheep Restaurants venue will be picked at random to win their next birthday celebration on the house for a table of ten. All guests who book for dinner at any restaurant during the ten week period will be automatically entered for a chance to win a spectacular celebration at the likes of the newly-opened luxurious Grand Majestic Sichuan, lavish teppanyaki Crown Super Deluxe or the opulent Ho Lee Fook. For walk-in restaurants guests will be given the chance to opt-in upon arrival. Winners will be notified via email each week.

• From 13 June take a walk down memory lane and relive some of the restaurants’ most beloved dishes from the past decade, giving guests the chance to indulge in long-gone favourites from the Keema Pau at MICHELIN-Starred New Punjab Club or the iconic New York-Italian dish re-popularized by Mario Carbone, Carbone’s Baked Clams, plus the crowd-pleasing Yakiniku Beef Udon at Fukuro.

• July sees the return of the Black Sheep Summer Festival, a transportive line-up of unforgettable experiences with this summer’s events promising to be truly all-star. Celebrating the best of Black Sheep, expect to see new editions of some of the most loved events from the past ten years, including an all-out bash version of Buenos Aires Polo Club’s Rock Night and the long-awaited second annual Great Rajasthan Rifles Cricket Tournament, an afternoon of sport, Pimms and Anglo-Indian fare from MICHELIN-starred chef Palash Mitra. Alongside the return of these extraordinary events are all new experiences crafted to celebrate the landmark summer. More information to come; tickets for July events are now available here.
• August will mark the return of Black Sheep Restaurants’ signature ten-day celebration of dining out with Black Series: Celebrating A Decade of Black Sheep, bringing its much-loved line-up of unmissable curated menus featuring signature dishes at exceptional value to all restaurants. In addition to their chosen menus, for the first time guests will also be invited to partake in complimentary experiences with the Black Sheep experts to deepen their knowledge on topics like sake, how to make the perfect Martini, how to shuck oysters or even some basic butchery. To be first in line to book this unmissable edition of Black Series, sign-up to the waitlist here.
• The summer of celebrations will wrap with the first-ever Black Sheep Gala in September. This grand, invite-only evening will bring together those who have been integral to the journey and growth of Black Sheep Restaurants as well as other industry leaders who have impacted the city’s art, culture and hospitality scenes over the last decade.

In the tenure of hospitality, a decade can be a lifetime. There are those that emerge, hit the one or five year mark and then celebrate very few others. Carving out a path in such a vast, dynamic and ever-changing scene is daunting. Still, those that are able to make their mark can ultimately redefine the industry, what it means to a group of people and what a community of individuals driven towards the same dream can achieve.

For Asim and Christopher, this ten years is only the first chapter in their book, a prologue to the Black Sheep Restaurants legacy and a peek into the great work to come. “Since day one, we have always had this underdog mentality that has been our driving force, and even though we’ve come so far, it still rings true. I can clearly remember that very first dinner service Chris and I had. Where the nerves and fear we were feeling were fighting with the adrenaline and excitement of opening the doors on something that was truly finally ours,” comments Hussain. ” Now, a decade, and over thirty restaurants on, we continue to chase this same rush, the thrill of bringing the magic of a dining room alive. If I could go back and tell my 26-year-old-self one thing, it would be that all the highs and lows, the hard work and the late nights, all the successes and the failures that inevitably will happen will be worth it.”

But it truly takes a village and Asim and Christopher also wanted to ensure that their village of almost 1000 was properly celebrated too. The newly-opened Team Canteen in SoHo is a permanent central hub dedicated to their community, where members can relax or take a break between shifts. A choice of free, hot meals are offered daily and the space even includes a bathroom with showers to freshen up before shifts. For Mark, “Our team is the foundation on which we will build the next ten, twenty, thirty years, so they deserve a place of their own away from guests, deliveries and the constant churn of the restaurants where they can really take a moment to recharge. It is a cliché but hospitality starts at home and we believe if we look after our team, they will be better placed to look after you, our guests.”

Stay-tuned to http://www.10anniversary.com.hk/ to keep up-to-date on all the newest happenings.

[ENDS]

ABOUT BLACK SHEEP RESTAURANTS

Black Sheep Restaurants is one of those special movements that comes along once in a lifetime. It starts with an ideal, an ambitious dream that flies dangerously close to cult-like status. Founded in 2012 by Syed Asim Hussain and Christopher Mark, it is far more than just culinary prowess or accolades, it is a band of like-minded people, devotedly fixated on the dream to redefine what it means to be forerunners, paving the way for the new generation of hospitality.

Since the humble and scrappy beginnings of a single restaurant, the disruptive hospitality team has become synonymous with trailblazing, story-driven ideas, curating distinct dining experiences about a particular time, place, culture or cuisine. Now, with over 30 restaurants to date, critical acclaim has followed the movement, from receiving the world’s first and only MICHELIN-Star for a Punjabi restaurant with New Punjab Club, One Star for critically acclaimed BELON and successive nominations for Restaurateurs of the year.

Black Sheep Restaurants expanded its experience with the development of its own proprietary food delivery service, GO, but what truly sets Black Sheep Restaurants apart and stokes the fire of perpetual progression is the innate ability to harness the intangible, to go up against the giants, to defy the odds and to do the exceptional.

In 2020, Black Sheep Restaurants developed a COVID-19 Playbook, mapping out best-in-class practices for navigating their business in the wake of a global pandemic. The valuable resource was picked up globally by businesses and governments, and translated into five languages.