When I moved to Atlanta, the two foods I missed the most were bagels (that is why I opened Highland Bagel) and noodles. During my travels through Japan and China after college, I fell in love with their noodle shops. They were the "Waffle House" of those cultures - unpretentious places of equality where suits, construction workers, hipsters and students would sit elbow to elbow and enjoy a cheap, fast bowl of noodles.
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| Brook & I celebrating our first sale at Doc Chey's in 1997 |
Highland Bagel was my first restaurant and during the long monotonous hours in the kitchen rolling bagels, Brook Messina (a co-worker) and I would talk about different food concepts that would work in Virginia Highland. I would frequently wax poetic about the noodle shops I remembered from my youth and travels and one day I said to Brook "We should open a noodle house." His response was a simple and direct "Let's do it!" That was the genesis of Doc Chey's. Our battle cry was "bringing noodles to the people".
We started working on a Pan-Asian noodle concept that would be fresh, approachable and affordable - nothing costing more than $7. Our original menu was based on my favorite dishes from my youth. Many of these menu items still remain on the menu today.
We opened our first restaurant in Morningside in 1997. Since then, we have opened noodle houses in Emory Village, Grant Park and Asheville, NC. By my calculations, we have served almost 6 million guests over that time! That's a lot of noodles!
-By Rich Chey
