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Happy Bar and Grill will finally replace American fast food stalwart TGI Fridays on Coventry Street in London’s West End, 13 months after taking the Piccadilly site. The Bulgarian restaurant chain, with 22 sites across the country and 2 in Barcelona, Spain, will bring its all-day menu to London later in 2019 in February 2020.
Happy was founded in Varna on Christmas Eve 1994, and now serves a menu of pizza, pasta, burgers, salads, and other casual-dining stalwarts, mixed in with traditional Bulgarian dishes. That means chicken tenders and burgers — also anchors of the restaurant Happy will replace — sit alongside tutamnik cheese bread and kyufteta, traditional meat balls. There is also a black burger with a charcoal bun, because it is 2020 and some restaurant trends are irrepressibly transnational.
The large Piccadilly Circus site is a big bet for the company in its first London opening, but the guaranteed tourist footfall — and London and its investors’ mutual appetite for large-scale international imports — should see it right.
More soon.
