Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?
That was the question that kept being fired at Karen and JP Saint as they prepared to open the doors to Hou Hou Mei in the summer of 2022.
A difficult post-Covid landscape was unfolding for hospitality businesses.
Around a tenth of UK restaurants closed for good during the pandemic and with a cost-of-living crisis beginning to bite, there were plenty reasons to tread carefully.
But the married couple knew they had something here.
They believed there was a gap in the market for an Asian restaurant, what they call a modern take on traditional Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Thai cuisine.
Two years down the line, they’ve got a raft of rave reviews on TripAdvisor and social media.
And forget about getting a table at the weekend without booking.
“On our opening night, we had about 110 people, a lot of family and friends,” JP said.
“We thought that was the busiest we were going to be. Now we’re doing 160 and it’s just another day.
“Since we started, it’s been full every single day. It’s insane how it has progressed.”
It turns out they were right.
The Tomnahurich Street ‘curse’
The location for Hou Hou Mei – which translates to “very, very yummy” in Cantonese – was one of the worries.
It required an extensive renovation to bring it up to scratch before opening night.
But not only that, the Saints had to contend with the fact that everyone kept telling them that the building itself was cursed.
That reputation was earned from the sharp turnaround of tenants at 18 Tomnahurich Street in the last 15 years.
It feels like every town and city has one of these, doesn’t it?
That places that keeps closing and then opening up again as something else.
The building was the home of a popular bar called Reflections and before that, it was known as the Royal Ordnance.
Many will remember it as Finlay’s, which closed in 2010.
It later became Ceol Mor and Nellie Dean’s before pizza restaurant Pepperoni Speciale opened there in 2017.
The restaurant closed during the pandemic.
Karen said: “It’s been a lot of things so everybody said to us ‘it’s cursed!’
“It needed a lot of work when we got it.
“But we still had confidence in what we were doing and it’s such a good location.”
The Hou Hou Mei blueprint
The success of Hou Hou Mei makes sense when you consider the backgrounds of its owners.
JP, who went to school in Merseyside and Caithness, started working in a Lybster restaurant at the age of 16.
Since then, he has trained as a pastry chef, worked alongside Albert Roux and been the head chef at several AA rosette restaurants.
As well as working in more locally familiar restaurants like Rocpool Reserve and the Golf View Hotel, his CV also includes stops in France and the US.
Karen, a former Inverness Royal Academy pupil, has a background in baking that has taken her all over the Highlands.
Her mother was involved with the popular Inverness takeaways Mr Rice and Dennis’s for more than two decades.
The Cantonese theme comes from Karen’s mum, who is from Hong Kong.
In their early years together, Karen, 34, and JP, 36, used to dine at a variety of Asian restaurants and imagined creating one of their own in the Highland capital.
Karen said: “We love Asian food and used to go to places and think ‘I wish we had something like this in Inverness’.
“We were looking around for the right property for ages, it took a long time.
“But it all came together. We’re really happy and feel really lucky with how it all turned out.”
Work-life balance in the restaurant business
The trials and tribulations of running a restaurant often make for a busy life.
Especially for Karen and JP, who have two young children: Lyanna, 6, and Mylo, 3.
Karen is also a champion weightlifter who is ranked number one in her weight category in Scotland.
But the pair are careful not to overload themselves. And they’re keen to make sure their staff – many of whom have been with them since day one – are treated the same way.
JP said: “Coming from a hotel and fine dining background, I’ve seen people get run into the ground.
“We don’t want to do that to anybody. That work-life balance is really important.”
Conversation