Penang Restaurant and Sushi Bar will open in late November or early December at 431 W. Franklin St., filling the vacancy left by the Pyewacket restaurant earlier this year.
Owners Conrad and Celine Cheah Thurstone said they have nearly completed demolition and are now interviewing building contractors for work on the new site.
Celine Cheah Thurstone said the design plans for the restaurant, which can seat up to 200, will include an open kitchen where diners can watch their food being cooked. Lunch and dinner will be served seven days a week.
While the food will be exotic, Conrad Thurstone is originally from Raleigh and is a UNC graduate with an master's in business administration.
She said that her family has opened Penang restaurants in New York and across the eastern seaboard and that her mother still conducts the occasional taste test.
The Chapel Hill site will be the first in North Carolina, Conrad Thurstone said, adding that the restaurants have been successful in the other locations. The husband-wife team is hoping for the same success here.
He said they chose this location because they think the marketplace for restaurants in Chapel Hill is thriving.
Celine Cheah Thurstone said the restaurant's "authentic Malaysian food is tremendously attractive to people from southeast Asia, so the demand from that marketplace is very large."
"The location is good because it's walking distance from (UNC)," she said. She said this is valuable because she expects some of the clientele to be students.
Celine Cheah Thurstone said she has friends who will travel to other Penang locations in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., to satisfy their cravings.
Until recently, she did not think it was the right time to open a restaurant in the area because she said people were not as adventurous. But Celine Cheah Thurstone said the area is now ready for the eatery's authentic ethnic menu, which resembles food that can be purchased from Malaysian street vendors.
"Durham and Chapel Hill are ready for something different."
She said the menu will include food from Indian, Malay, Chinese, and Thai cultures, as well as a sushi bar. Some popular selections at Penang are roti, an Indian bread and dip, and fatay, a Malay peanut sauce.
Conrad Thurstone said he and his wife are excited to invite people to visit Penang when it opens because Malaysian food will be a new experience for many.
Robert Humphreys, executive director of the Downtown Commission, said he welcomes the addition of a Malaysian restaurant to downtown.
"They're jumping in there and trendy and different," he said. "I think they'll do real well."
The City Editor can be reached at citydesk@unc.edu.
