A popular former café in Stroud that was once the town's Wimpy is set to serve up a fresh retail offer as a Japanese noodle bar.

The move marks a resurfacing of Punchline-Gloucester.com's story last October, when it was reported that Japanese restaurant Tomari-Gi had closed after just over three years of business on nearby George Street.

At the time, speculation abounded that Tomari-Gi's owner, Hugo Lonsdale and his Japanese wife Mizuki, would soon relocate within the town and launch a new retail offer.

That step now looks likely to be imminent with news that the pedestrianised High Street's Penny Farthing Café, which has been empty since last month, is set to host the Daikoku Ramen Japanese Noodle Bar - amid local social media reports that the husband-and-wife team will front the project.

In the 1970s, the same High Street address played host to McDonald's competitor Wimpy while in 2021 the replacement Penny Farthing enjoyed the limelight when it was used as a film set for the 2023-released movie The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which starred Oscar-winning actor Jim Broadbent.

Planning documents indicate that the unit has a maximum of 60 covers.

Ramen is a wheat noodle dish, the word having evolved from the Chinese word lamian, which means "pulled noodles". It was brought to Japan by Chinese settlers in Yokohama as a nostalgic echo of southern Chinese noodle dishes and quickly gained popularity in Japan in midst of the Second World War. The development of instant noodles, in 1958, further popularised the dish.

● In 2012, the Guardian reported that ramen could be set to become a menu-topping UK favourite and said the "tasty noodle broth offers a punk rock twist on comfort food". Trends for the popularity of noodles in the UK analysed by Statista showed that 300 million servings were consumed in 2016, a figure that had risen to 400 million by 2021. However, many food fashion experts point out that the growth of Japanese food in the UK is a slow burn: Hiroko, the first UK Japanese restaurant, opened in London in 1967, but Wagamama didn't arrive until 25 years later, in 1992, while YO! Sushi first opened in 1997.