BRIGHTON’S brightest restaurant is to open a sister site to please its hungry fans in Hove.

La Choza has found a second venue in Western Road after more than a year’s searching and it will open later this month.

Co-founder Aoife Sweeney is promising more of the same for the popular restaurant’s customers but with an increased focus on cocktails and a secondary menu introducing a Mexican/Lebanese kebab to the city.

The Mexican street food restaurant will take over the site of the recently closed Rootcandi.

The country’s first vegan tapas restaurant run by Iydea founder Steve Billam, Rootcandi opened in summer 2015 and expanded in Easter 2016 before its sudden closure at the start of the month – to the dismay of hundreds of its fans.

The new home for La Choza, which in Spanish means The Shack, will be around 70 covers, twice the size of its original and always packed-out home in the North Laine.

Ms Sweeney said: “We have been looking for a second place for two years, solidly for at least a year.

“It’s been a case of looking for the right place, looking for a bigger site with a bigger bar focused on cocktails.

“We will have a secondary menu of interesting street food which will change monthly including a taco al pastor which is like a pork shawarma with pineapple.

“Western Road has a lot of Lebanese restaurants, kebab shops, and the taco al pastor is from Lebanese people who came to Mexico City in the 18th century. Nobody else is doing this in Brighton.”

The restaurant was inspired by years of travelling. Co-founder Annie Gelpey spent four years sailing the Caribbean coast with her daughter.

La Choza’s original restaurant in Gloucester Road has grown in popularity since its opening five years ago, enjoying celebrity endorsements from Jonathan Ross while even the arrival of big chain street food rival Wahaca in January 2016 has not halted its progress.

The restaurant opened a second kitchen at the Hare and Hounds pub in London Road which ran for three years before serving its last meal earlier this month.

Work is now under way to give the Western Road site the same vibrant and distinctive feel as the original.

Ms Sweeney said: “It’s going to look pretty funky, it will be done in the same La Choza vein.

“We’re not really worried [about taking on a site that has just closed], the footfall is a lot better here.

“Our last site was a failed site and we turned it around, it is far harder to get people into North Laine than Western Road. We have got a big following in Hove and we wanted to do something closer to them.”