Interior remodeling begins for new Clinton restaurant featuring Mongolian noodles
Work is now underway on an interior remodeling of a building in Centre Plaza in Clinton for a new restaurant called BK Kitchen, featuring something new for this area: Mongolian fried noodles.
Owner Sophak “So” Sopheap obtained a building permit from the city of Clinton on June 9 for the $50,000 “commercial interior” work on the building at 1115 N. Charles G. Seivers Blvd., between Little Caesar’s Pizza and The UPS Store, in the outlying strip center.
Cliff Helton & Associates was listed as the contractor for the work on the 960-square-foot space.
The project has been delayed for more than a year as Sopheap dealt with some personal legal issues, but construction on the interior began about two weeks ago, said people who run the adjoining businesses.
Sopheap could not be reached for comment about his updated plans. The restaurant originally was supposed to open in September 2020, after Sopheap announced his plans in early June 2020.
Signs announcing the coming BK Kitchen restaurant have been on the front of the business since May 2020.
Sopheap founded Master Donuts in Clinton around 2015, but later sold it and then opened other doughnut shops of the same name in Lenoir City, Oneida and Somerset (Kentucky).
He said last June that he had moved back to Clinton from Somerset, but was keeping the doughnut shop open there. The Clinton Master Donuts is now operated by his brother, he said.
BK Kitchen will have inside dining as well as takeout, and will offer Mongolian grilled noodles along with a menu of sandwiches and smoothies. Included will be a fried chicken sandwich, he said.
Sopheap said the restaurant will have up to three employees besides himself and his wife, depending on how many tables can be fitted into the space.
The space was the location of a dry cleaners that closed at the end of April 2020, according to Skip Nickle, who in May 2020 opened The UPS Store just next door.
Sopheap is a native of Cambodia who worked with his father in the family’s original Master Donuts shop in Texas before moving to Tennessee to open the Clinton store.
When it opens, BK Kitchen’s will operate Monday through Saturday, and will be closed on Sunday, Sopheap said earlier.
Centre Plaza, which also includes businesses in the main strip such as Grocery Outlet, The Dollar Tree, China Inn, Goodwill Industries, Jackson-Hewitt Tax Service and the recently opened El Indio Grill and Bar, is owned and managed by Coastal Equities of Weston, Florida.