Hull shopping arcade celebrates new tents and reopening of destination restaurant

A Victorian arcade in the centre of Hull is now back to capacity with the arrival of a host of new tenants and the reopening of a destination restaurant.

Stretch Pizza is the latest addition to the food offer at Paragon Arcade, which has been further enhanced by the reopening of The Hispanist after a break of two months spent revamping the kitchen and menus.

With other new openings Paragon Arcade now has six food outlets serving Chinese, pan-Asian, pizza, Spanish, coffee and snacks, and now smoothies and other healthy options. Four retailers sell music and memorabilia, jewellery, babywear and flowers. There are also four service businesses working in men’s and women’s hair, beauty and tattoos.

Georgia Allenby, design and marketing manager for the Arcade’s owners, Allenby Commercial, commented: “It’s great to see Paragon Arcade full again with vibrant new businesses all locally-owned and offering something completely different. We have always tried to create a really good mix and that’s what we have.

“Every one of them has a good customer base and we will try to build on that by resuming our events programme, which is really exciting given that we already have great music and fantastic street food under our own roof!”

Allenbys moved quickly to replace businesses which had moved out during the last year in search of bigger premises or to focus on their online sales. One trader, Elena Georgiou, moved her brow business upstairs to Paragon Studios, which Allenbys are offering to businesses which need workspace but not a shop window.

The arcade’s biggest new arrival is Stretch Pizza, where husband and wife team Jason and Tash Nichols are serving customers in a 40-seat restaurant and “living a dream” which dates back to before the first lockdown.

Furthermore, The Hispanist first opened just before Christmas 2019, too late to make the most of that festive season, and then saw trade for the next three years “decimated” by lockdowns and the economic hit from war in Ukraine.

But chef patron Nick Hill is now up and running again and having won the Best in Food and Drink category at this year’s HullBID Awards is looking forward to welcoming back diners from across the country.

He added: “We’ve changed the downstairs a bit to help us run things better. Upstairs is much the same. The décor has to be good, the food has to be good, the people have to be good. That’s what sets the standard. We have always wanted to drive up standards and that’s what we’ll keep doing.”

By Matthew Neville – Senior Correspondent, Bdaily

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