Co-founders of Black Sheep Restaurants find success with concept eateries in Central and SoHo

The recent opening of Stazione Novella marks the eighth concept in just four years for Black Sheep Restaurants, and its co-founders - Canadian Christopher Mark and Hong Kong-born Syed Asim Hussain - say that with each concept, there is a story that needs to be told.

"We want to tell stories through food," says Hussain, who turned his back on a career in finance to set up Black Sheep in 2012 with Mark, a seasoned chef who has worked at top establishments in Canada, Shanghai, Barbados and Hong Kong. Since then, they have opened popular eateries Boqueria, Motorino, La Vache!, Ho Lee Fook, Chôm Chôm, Carbone and Burger Circus.

The story behind their latest venture, Stazione Novella - an Italian bar that sells "the best paninis in town", according to Mark - came out of an unfortunate incident while on a business trip in Italy.

"We went to buy some wine for our restaurants in Italy, and we set up all these meetings with wine merchants from the north to south of the country," Mark says. "I think in Naples our wallets were stolen. So we got to Florence and realised we had no money. We couldn't even check into our hotel, so we had to make arrangements through Western Union. Asim had a couple of euros in his pocket, so we went to a panini shop, and it was pretty good. We were quite hungry, and even though we lost our shirts, we were having a glass of wine, we were having a panini, we were having a good time. We were not downtrodden by this, and so we are trying to create something like that in Hong Kong."

"We are trying to build a convivial neighbourhood bar that's Italian and serves paninis," Hussain adds. "We named the bar after the same station in Florence [where we enjoyed our wine and panini]. The new Italian bar is across the road from PMQ, so there is a lot of hustle and bustle on the corner. So we catch the energy of the train station."