Was it a surprise when Lily’s was reviewed in one of the national newspapers?

PV – “Yeah, we didn’t even know about it. We were also listed in The Good Food Guide. Once we started promoting ourselves on social media, we began getting reviews and I’d sit and reply to the comments. I didn’t really know what I was doing. That gave us a bit more awareness and then, thanks to word of mouth, people came and then brought more people along. We were asked to do quite a bit of catering as well for weddings and things – even for our English customers.”

Why did you make the decision to move and expand?

PV – “Obviously we were getting very busy over there and we knew we needed a bit more space. We had 36 seats in the old place and in this new restaurant can sit 80 or more. This used to be our social club and then my nephews, my brothers and my dad all decided it would be good to turn this into the restaurant. We wanted to maintain the family atmosphere because we had so many customers scared we were going to lose the personal service, so we had to bear that in mind. So now we have this larger restaurant and the social club next door.”