Mongolian noodle eatery opens to good reviews in Centre Plaza
Keo Nhean, left, co-owner of the new BK Kitchen Mongolian Grill in Clinton, dishes up noodles at the restaurant, assisted by her daughters Millie, center, and Elissa. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Already, the restaurant has become a hit with diners, with numerous positive reviews and comments on local Facebook pages.
The restaurant’s concept is simple: The customer fills a big bowl with fresh vegetables, noodles, and meats – including lean beef and pork, chicken, shrimp and “krab,” and even fresh eggs, and then the chef cooks it all on top of a large grill. There are various spices available for adding to the bowl.
For drinks, BK Kitchen has a large variety of flavored teas, smoothies, and even boba teas, along with bottled soft drinks.
The price for the bowl of food is $8.99 per person. The food is available for dining in or takeout, but the number of tables is limited.
Owner Sophak “So” Sopheap said he was excited to get the restaurant open after nearly three years of planning.
The restaurant operates from 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. for lunch and from 4:30- 9 p.m. for dinner, Monday through Saturday. It is closed on Sundays.
Interior renovations took nearly a year. Sopheap obtained a building permit from the city of Clinton last June for the $50,000 “commercial interior” work on the building at 1115 N. Charles G. Seivers Blvd., between Little Caesar’s and The UPS Store, in the outlying strip center.
Signs announcing the coming BK Kitchen restaurant had been on the front of the business since May 2020.
Sopheap founded Master Donuts in Clinton around 2015, but later sold it to his brother, and then opened other doughnut shops of the same name in Oneida and Somerset (Kentucky).
He said he moved back to Clinton from Somerset, but was keeping the doughnut shop open there. The Clinton Master Donuts is still operated by his brother, he said. Sopheap said the restaurant will have up to three employees besides himself, his wife and their daughters.
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.
A native of Cambodia, Sopheap worked with his father in the family’s original Master Donuts shop in Texas before moving to Tennessee to open the Clinton store.
Centre Plaza, which also includes businesses in the main strip such as United Grocery Outlet, The Dollar Tree, MS Wine & Liquor, China Inn, Goodwill Industries, Jackson-Hewitt Tax Service and El Indio Grill and Bar, is owned and managed by Coastal Equities of Weston, Florida.