The group behind one of western Sydney’s popular Lebanese restaurants has acquired the sprawling 600-seat Paper Mill restaurant complex in Liverpool. The move is the latest chapter in the success story of the Al Aseel restaurant business, which has expanded across the city, and even into airline food and supermarket products.

With new restaurants in Chatswood and Pagewood, Al Aseel has also successfully crossed the “Red Rooster line”, the imaginary and tongue-in-cheek divide that tries to draw food boundaries from the north-west to south-east suburbs.

The business – which first opened in Greenacre in 2002 – is not the only western Sydney brand pushing east, with Granville chicken joint El Jannah’s locations now dotting the city, including outlets in Newtown and Crows Nest.

While a strong Middle Eastern demographic underpins Al Aseel’s western Sydney customer base, the spread in popularity of Middle Eastern cookery programs and dishes appearing on mainstream menus gave Al Aseel the confidence to expand.

“The Alexandria restaurant was the guinea pig,” says Georges Badr, group general manager at Platinum Hospitality Group. “It showed it could work with a different demographic.”

Suddenly real estate agents were calling. Late last year, Al Aseel spread its wings, opening in Pagewood and Chatswood. “Pagewood has barely any Middle Eastern clientele,” Badr says. It’s a similar story in Chatswood, where Badr notes the restaurant does have a following among the Armenian community.

While Al Aseel now sits under the corporate umbrella of Platinum Hospitality, Badr says Al Aseel founder Faysal El Abd retains ownership. “It just needed a bit more corporate structure around it,” he says. A heavy expansion program in 2024 included a new 300-seat Al Aseel restaurant at Accor Stadium, in Sydney Olympic Park.

As part of the expansion, the wholesale side of the business branched into airline food, with passengers now tucking into Al Aseel on Malaysia Airlines or Qatar Airways. Six months ago, Mazati by Al Aseel dips and snacks popped up in Woolworths stores.

Badr won’t comment on what Platinum Hospitality paid last year for Liverpool’s sprawling The Paper Mill restaurant complex. When it opened in 2019, the 600-seater mega venue was a pin-up example of a slick food redevelopment with multiple venues. The Paper Mill had mixed results as a dining venue, with its performance not helped by launching on the eve of the pandemic.

“The cafe is still there,” Badr says, before pointing out The Paper Mills’ new venues, which include Al Aseel, Carrera Bar and The Vault, an upmarket restaurant focused on seafood and premium cuts of meat.

While Badr concedes the massive food precinct “needs a lot of work to fill it”, there’s optimism Sydney’s west will continue to grow with increased infrastructure and its soon-to-open airport.

Badr has noticed one big outlier between the clientele in different parts of Sydney.

“Big events are much bigger in the west, they really [embrace] them. Mother’s Day is the biggest day in the year for us,” he says.