A POPULAR Asian cuisine restaurant has upscaled into a new town centre unit after outgrowing its original site.

Gurkha Asian Fusion will begin serving customers at the former Wox restaurant at 2 Southampton Road in Ringwood – just off the High Street – on Thursday, February 2.

This comes less than two weeks after owners closed the previous Gurkha restaurant which was located in the former Indigo curry house a short walk away by the Market Place.

While the previous site focused on Nepalese cuisine, the new restaurant will showcase a blend of Thai, Chinese, Nepalese and Indian food.

Bournemouth Echo: Dishes at Gurkha restaurant in RingwoodDishes at Gurkha restaurant in Ringwood (Image: Gurkha Ringwood)

The manager of Gurkha, Sagar Bhattarai, told the Echo: “The restaurant we were in originally was very small and there was not much room to complement the number of customers we were seeing.

“This bigger unit is more ideal for us.

“Thai is quite in demand and making our menu fusion is a better idea, we feel, to attract more people. There are lots of Indian restaurants around anyway, so fusion will just give us something different – people can have a bit of everything.”

The previous restaurant received stellar reviews on Facebook and Google – averaging 4.8 stars out of five on the latter – where praise generally centred on the food quality and customer service.

Bournemouth Echo: Gurkha restaurant in Southampton Road, RingwoodGurkha restaurant in Southampton Road, Ringwood (Image: Gurkha Ringwood)

“We’ve had a lot of reaction since we advertised the move and so many people are happy about it,” Mr Bhattarai added.

“There are not many who do this kind of cuisine around here and people are liking it.”

Mr Bhattarai says there will be no frills for the reopening on Thursday, electing to start as they mean to go on. He said: “It will be a normal evening, we just want to have a soft opening and treat customers in a nice way. People will know its our first night as we’ve had a lot of booking for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We can’t wait.”

It is understood discussions are underway between the owner of the old Gurkha site at 74 High Street and new operators to fill the empty unit.