VIDEO: Top Chef Paul Qui Dishes On His New Ventures
The Daily Meal's video producer, Ali Rosen, caught up with chef Paul Qui, of Uchiko and East Side King in Austin, at the City Grit Culinary Salon in New York City.
The winner of Top Chef: Texas recently announced that he will be opening a few new ventures, including a new location of his burgeoning trailer business East Side King close to the University of Texas campus.
His second upcoming project is a brick-and-mortar restaurant, which Qui is still working on the concept for. He explains, "It is going to be my flagship restaurant where I get to do whatever I want, hopefully, with the food. Eat Side King is also about playing with food and having a good time, but this restaurant is going to be a little combination of both. I'm working on still defining exactly what it is I'm going to be doing at that spot." He remarks further, "I know what I don't want it to be, I don't necessarily want it to be a Japanese restaurant. I don't want to say its kaiseki or a tapas place, or a tasting and small plates restaurant — I have no idea how I'm going to define that yet."
With regards to a time frame for the new restaurant, Qui hopes to have it open by December. "The 50-seat menu is pretty close to finished," he said. "And actually it's got a lot of things from Texas and the surrounding Austin neighborhood — it's basically food sourced from our area, and I'll let you guys define it."
Check back for more updates about the development of Qui's exciting new spots.