The Deal

Tastebuds can take a journey to the east at Hong Kong Lounge with a three-course Thai feast for two, four or six people. Guests can tuck into a sharing platter to start, including the likes of salt and pepper mussels, prawn toast or fish cakes, or opt for a meatier one with chicken satay, spare ribs, and spring rolls. Main courses give customers a choice from exotic stir fries to seafood red curry, or beef massaman. Cooling desserts include mango pudding or vanilla ice cream.

Choose from the following options for a three course Thai banquet:

• £19 for two

• £35 for four

• £49 for six

Groupon Asks Elaine Emmons about the ideas behind Hong Kong Lounge and her cooking disasters when starting out.

How did you get started in the restaurant industry?

"I started my first takeaway in 1993 when I had my daughter and found it difficult to continue my job in the medical profession. I was able to run my own catering business and look after my daughter. My plan was to go back to working in the NHS when my daughter was old enough to go to school, however I found a lot of satisfaction running my own business so I opened more takeaways and restaurants."

What's the restaurant like inside? What sort of look and feel were you going for?

"I have fitted many restaurants in the last 20 years and each of them are different. Some have a more ethnic feel like the Orchid Cuisine, with a huge wall decorated with 3D figures of Thai women and artificial orchids. The Hong Kong Lounge is more casual and informal as it is meant to attract tourists and students from mainland China."

What was the inspiration for the menu? Does it have a unifying theme?

"The Hong Kong Lounge menu is Pan-Asian cuisine covering Cantonese, Pekinese, Szechuan, Thai and Malaysian. As the restaurant is sited in the centre of Bournemouth with its growing tourists population, as well as the thousands of Chinese students attending Bournemouth University, it is tailored to meet this demand."

What’s your favourite dish from the menu?

"My favourite dish is the signature dish from Indonesia, called Nasi Lemak; a coconut rice dish with chicken curry, garnished with chilli sambal, peanuts and fried anchovies."

What made you want to work in food?

"My mother was a great cook, always experimenting with her native Cantonese cuisine and local Malaysian products. Hence I developed passion for cooking at a very young age."

What is your first memory of cooking?

"When I first arrived in England and was doing my training at Mount Vernon hospital, I started cooking all on my own. I tried to deep fry some spicy chicken wings. It was a disaster as the oil was too hot, so I burnt the chicken and found that the inside of the wings was uncooked!"