Urban Sugar/Eighty 8 Donut Cafe owner Kevin Sandes and his business partner David Gilbert are developing a new restaurant in Waterville called Money Cat Fried Chicken and Donuts. The restaurant will be located at 173 Main Street and is slated to open in summer 2018.
Gilbert and Sandes were culinary school classmates and are longtime friends.
“This is more than a business,” said Sandes. “It’s about building community, friendships, connections.” Added Gilbert: “This is a partnership that has grown out of friendship. Twenty years after culinary school and some pretty wild adventure travel, we’re reconnecting and bringing together these two concepts—that’s where the magic is.”
Gilbert was a 2013 Beard award semifinalist in the Best Chef: South West category. He has traveled through Asia and used those experiences to inform the cooking at his restaurant Tuk Tuk Taproom in Texas.
Sandes spent years as a hotel chef and in catering before launching Eighty 8 Donut Cafe (formerly Urban Sugar) first as a food truck and then as a brick-and-mortar location at Sugarloaf Mountain.
The pair selected the restaurant’s name to “reflect the restaurant’s Asian inspiration, abundance for Waterville, and good fortune for all”.
Waterville?!?! Cmon!! 😉
Kate, we can hit it up on a summer road trip to the Midcoast.
^ I will be a stowaway!
This appears to be the latest incarnation of what was previously ‘Thai Bird’ – they did a popup or two around town last year. I had some of their stuff at Brian Boru and coincidentally Urban Sugar was there that same day.
Yes, this is the brick and mortar evolution of the Thai Bird pop-ups. Good memory!