A taste of the East is set to come to the East end of Hamilton thanks to the Little Venice group.

For the L'Oriental Express team, which is part of Little Venice, will be adopting the same winning formula that has worked so well in their original shop at Par-la-Ville Road in a new location on Victoria Street, close to the junction with Parliament Street.

The new shop is expected to open at the end of this month and will have the same theme and products as the existing enterprise, according to L'Oriental manager Costanzo di Meglio.

"Hopefully we are going to be open by the end of October," he said.

"It is actually going to be in the same style as the original shop, only it is a little bit smaller, like a miniature version."

He said the decision to expand the current business was down to the big customer demand out there in the marketplace.

"There has just been a huge request for us to go to the East of the city, so that is what we are going to do, using the same decor and food," he said.

The idea has been some time in the planning, allied to the fact that specialist cooking equipment has had to be flown in all the way from Italy, according to Mr. di Meglio.

"We decided to do it in April and it took some time to do because all of the equipment has been designed and built in Italy," he said.

"But now, we are very excited about it and hopefully we are going to open according to plan soon."

Meanwhile, the company has made a point of recruiting more Bermudian employees to supplement their already highly skilled workforce, with six to seven staff running the new place.

"We are trying to get Bermudian staff and Little Venice is making a huge effort to bring them in to work in our team."

Among some of the original lines are oriental cuisine, a salad bar and the choice of 15 to 16 different types of sandwich, which Mr. di Meglio believes will go down well with their customers in the East end. But Mr. di Meglio denied that L'Oriental is set to acquire land next door to the popular original shop as an additional seating area.

"We are not interested in that," he said. "We just want to keep what we have already going well."