Off the hook food truck Tamika.JPG

Customers line up for Rocket Shrimp and crab cake sliders at the Off the Hook food truck during the Trucks by the Tracks benefit at Railroad Park in September 2013. (Tamika Moore/tmoore@al.com)

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – The downtown Thai restaurant Surin & Company is closing after nine years in business, and a new seafood restaurant from the owner of the Off the Hook food truck will open in its place, AL.com has learned.

Surin & Company will close after lunch on Friday, and if all goes according to plan, the new Hooked seafood restaurant should open in time for lunch on Monday.

Rayford Cook, who started the Off the Hook food truck about a year and a half ago, will be the chef-owner of the new restaurant. He will continue to operate the food truck, he said.

“It has been part of my plan to open up a restaurant,” Cook told AL.com this afternoon. “The food truck is something that I wanted to do and was excited to do, but I’ve always had the game plan of opening a brick-and-mortar, as well.

“I am going to spend most of my time in the restaurant and let my crew take the truck out on a daily basis,” Cook added. “So we will still have both.”

Surin & Company opened in the Concord Center in downtown Birmingham in February 2005. The restaurant was originally called Surin & Chris. (Birmingham News file/Bernard Troncale)

A Surin & Company employee who answered the phone at the restaurant this morning declined to give her name but confirmed that Friday is the restaurant’s last day.

The other Surin restaurants in the Birmingham area – Surin West in Five Points South, Surin of Thailand in Mountain Brook's Crestline Village and Surin 280 in Perimeter Park South off U.S. 280 – will remain open, she said.

The downtown Surin opened in February 2005 on the first floor of the Concord Center at the corner of Third Avenue North and Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard.

The new Hooked menu will feature several of the dishes already popular with Off the Hook customers – including crab cake sliders, fish tacos, and the spicy Rocket Shrimp – as well as several new ones, Cook said.

“We are going to have shrimp and grits daily, a New England-style lobster roll, gumbo, red beans and rice and a lot of different sliders – from barbecue to shrimp to crab cakes,” Cook said. “We are also going to do a lot of po’ boys, including shrimp and oyster po’ boys.”

Price points will be in the $8 to $10 range, Cook said.

Hooked will open for lunch only for the first two to three weeks, Cook said, but after that, he plans to open for happy hour, dinner service and Sunday brunch.

The lunch hours will be 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.

As for the restaurant’s name, Cook explained: “They (customers) come in one time to eat, and they’re hooked.”

A Hooked website and Facebook page will be coming soon, Cook said, but until then, he said customers should visit the Off the Hook Facebook page or its website, ryouhooked.com, for more information.