Swiss investor rolls in on Cork's Tung Sing for over €1.8m
A new restaurant operator will be sought for the upper floors of No 23 St Patrick’s Street, former home to the Tung Sing Chinese restaurant, which closed in 2024. The building, which also houses jeweller H Samuel on the ground floor, has sold to a Swiss investor for in excess of €1.8m.
A prolific Swiss investor has bought the former Tung Sing restaurant premises in Cork City in a deal worth in excess of €1.8m.
The St Patrick’s Street building is the latest in a string of city centre properties purchased by the Swiss businessman since he set up an Irish-registered property company six years ago.
Identified in company registration files as Mischa Khakshouri, director of Irish-registered company Swiss Property Management Ltd, he posted on social media recently that the company was “completing our fifth year in business here and still loving Cork”.
The serial investor has purchased multiple commercial properties in Cork City. They include:
- The double-fronted Holland & Barrett property at Nos 43/44 St Patrick’s Street, which he bought for €2.6m in 2023;
- The former Ulster Bank premises at No 16/17A Winthrop St, which he bought for close to €1m in 2024. The ground floor and a portion of the overhead has since been leased to health food restaurant Sprout & Co;
- The Irish Examiner’s city centre office at the junction of Princes St and Oliver Plunkett St, a four-storey building with additional tenants, for which he paid €800,000;
- The former O’Connors shoe shop at No 57 Oliver Plunkett St, where the upper floors have since been converted into apartments;
- A couple of premises near the GPO on Pembroke St/Oliver Plunkett St, including Nos 21, 22, and 23, for which he paid €1.25m;
- Carbery House, at 67-69 South Mall, which he acquired off-market in 2022 for around €2m.
While the low-key investor has kept his identity under wraps, Cork City Council planning files identify a company called Swiss Property Management Limited as the owners of 67-69 South Mall, whose directors are listed as Mischa Khakshouri, Sascha Khakshouri, and Fiona Byrne.
The company, set up in 2019, was granted permission in 2024 by the city council to convert the South Mall building into 17 apartments with a ground floor cafe.
In 2023, the Irish Examiner reported €10m had been invested locally across several assets by the Swiss investor.
Listed in Swiss commercial records as president and CEO of a company called Kh Holding AG — a holding/investment company based in Zurich — Mr Khakshouri is also registered as president of the board and CEO of MKM AG, a separate Zurich company active in architecture and engineering services.
His Facebook page says he studied architecture at Parsons School of Architecture, which is in New York. His latest Cork city acquisition at No 23 St Patrick’s Street — where the upper floors had operated as a family-run Chinese restaurant from the early 1960s until the closure of Tung Sing in 2024 — adds another high profile asset to his growing city property portfolio.
The 4,499sq ft (418sq m) building has several attractive features such as a curved, coloured glass canopy over an entrance door and decorative railings at first floor level, not to mention a superb view over the main street.
Plans for the former Tung Sing premises include retaining its upper floors as a restaurant, while jewellers H Samuels will continue to trade from the ground floor commercial unit, having recently signed a 10-year lease, up to June 2035.
Dennis Guerin of Frank V Murphy, acting for the Swiss buyer, said the intention is to rent out the upper floors to a restaurant operator at an annual lease of €45,000pa.
Savills brought three-storey No 23 to market late last year, on behalf of client Irish Life, with a guide price of €1.7m. It sold for in excess of €1.8m.
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