Man behind 26 Hong Kong restaurants is hungry to expand - and Gordon Ramsay is on the menu

Sandeep Sekhri, founder and managing director of Dining Concepts, has helped shape the Hong Kong dining scene over the past 13 years.

As one of the first non-Chinese dining groups in the city to nurture home-grown talent and bring celebrity chef brands here, Dining Concepts has opened multiple restaurants over a short period, helping SoHo to become a dining hub.

Now with 26 restaurants, including Bombay Dreams, Braza, Craftsteak, Mama San, BLT Burger, Nahm, Al Molo - the list goes on - and 700 employees throughout Central, SoHo, Tsim Sha Tsui, and a pizzeria in Macau, the organisation is set to expand dramatically over the next few years with new ventures in Hong Kong and the mainland, starting with another Gordon Ramsay brand opening soon.

"We are opening London House with Gordon Ramsay - a pub and grill. It's in Tsim Sha Tsui Centre, in Tsim Sha Tsui East, and the majority of the seats are outdoors facing the harbour. It has 70 to 80 outdoor seats," says Sekhri, who points out that Ramsay's Macau restaurant will not go ahead and that London House is different to Bread Street Kitchen in that it is a gastro-pub concept.

Then, towards the end of the year, Dining Concepts will roll out well-known Belgian cafe brand Le Pain Quotidien across Greater China. "It's a communal-table bakery cafe and there are about 300 of them all around the world. We have the licence for Hong Kong and Greater China, so the idea is to expand. It's happening by the end of the year," Sekhri says.

"[This bakery] is moving with the times; it's organic, it's fresh, people can go there for a coffee, it's a meeting place. About 60 to 70 per cent of the clientele are women. It's big on breakfast, lunch, tea and some dinner - they adapt to different countries in different ways.