(keep reading to learn what happened)
Season: UK | View All Season UK Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: December 11, 2007
The Curry Lounge Address: 110 Upper Parliament Street Nottingham NG1 6LF United Kingdom
Episode Recap
The Curry Lounge was a Nottingham, UK restaurant featured on Season 5 of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares in the UK.
Though the The Curry Lounge Kitchen Nightmares episode aired in December 2007, the actual filming and visit from Gordon Ramsay took place much earlier in 2007.
It was Season 5 Episode 7 on the UK version.
The Curry Lounge is an Indian restaurant owned by Arfan Razak, aka Raz.
The Curry Lounge has an overcomplicated menu and an inexperienced staff.
The menu features many different food items. The kitchen finds it hard to keep up with the vast menu.
The restaurant is losing almost £3,000 per week, which is a deep hole to dig out of.
When Gordon arrives, he orders sea bass and the do-it-yourself curry.
The chicken Gordon orders is very dry, and the sea bass is under seasoned and bland.
Gordon decides to stay at The Curry Lounge and watch the dinner service. He wants to see how long it will take the kitchen to get the food to the customers.
The master chef notices that food takes a long time to come out of the kitchen.
The customers are unimpressed by the food when they finally do receive it.
When Gordon goes to inspect the kitchen, he realizes that almost everything is frozen except for the naan bread. The naan bread is literally the only fresh item at The Curry Lounge. Can you believe that?
Gordon is fed up, rips up the DIY curry menu, and tells the staff he wants a specialty dish added.
During dinner service, Gordon realizes no one is ordering the specialty dish, and that is because the servers are not telling the customers about it.
Gordon is getting very annoyed and reminds the server to notify the diners about the specialty dish.
The front of the house does not get along with the kitchen staff, so Gordon takes them on a team-building activity to play cricket.
Gordon’s next idea is to make a tiffin lunch and serve a sampling of all the foods The Curry Lounge offers. Such as curry, rice, and vegetables.
The lounge sells forty lunches in five minutes. The staff is very impressed. Maybe this Gordon Ramsay guy knows a thing or two about running a successful restaurant, right?
Gordon calls in Alfred Prasad, an Indian chef, to help with the relaunch.
The team also launches a new menu.
To spice things up, Gordon has Bollywood dancers outside the restaurant to promote the relaunch.
There is a local curry expert invited to the relaunch. Luckily, the customers all love the new food.
They are very impressed with the changes Gordon has made and the food critic loved everything except for her chicken dish, which was dry.
Now, let’s talk about what happened to the restaurant after The Curry Lounge Kitchen Nightmares episode.
The Curry Lounge Update - What Happened Next?
One month later, The Curry Lounge is finally making a profit.
In fact, the restaurant is doing so well it is hard for customers to get a table for dinner, which is always a good sign.
Gordon Ramsay does have a few issues, such as with the restaurant’s naan stands. But overall The Curry Lounge seems like a real success.
In fact, the restaurant got a mention in the 2009 British Curry Awards, which is a great sign.
Raz also got his time in the spotlight, as he appeared on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire TV show in 2012.
In 2015, Arfan Razak sold The Curry Lounge to a new buyer. However, the restaurant would later close in 2018.
As of 2022, The Curry Lounge is permanently closed. The old The Curry Lounge location in Nottingham is now occupied by a new restaurant called CASA Italian, which seems to have good reviews.
What happened to Arfan Razak from The Curry Lounge?
Unfortunately, Raz’s story does not have a happy ending after selling The Curry Lounge. In 2017, he was found guilty of £64,741.54 in tax fraud, according to the Nottingham Post. The investigation started in 2014, before he sold The Curry Lounge.
In order to avoid prison time, Razak agreed to repay the full amount that he owed.
More Information
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Last updated: 2022-11-11 06:31
Saying that the restaurant was “losing nearly £3000 euros” doesn’t make sense! Is it £’s (British pounds) or € (European euros)? It can’t be both – I’m guessing £’s as it’s a British restaurant.
Typo 🙂 Fixed.
He was losing $3,000 pounds but calling in Euros on his tax reports, thus he got arrested later for tax fraud. You have to imagine that most of the owners on any reality show are going to give fake info when they are in front of the cameras. The idea that some of these dumps are losing thousands per week when there is nobody working there except the family and some random minimum wage servers/assistants is hard to believe.
Why call the restaurant the Curry Lounge when it had a large menu? With that name it should have focused on curry, and make it top-class.
As the owner is of Indian descent and had tax problems, did he inspire George Harrison, who of course was a big fan of Indian music and the sitar, to write the song Tax Man?
Curry just means stew, so there’s also hundreds of different types of curry. Narrowing down to curry might streamline the dishwasher station and the front of house in that meal sets are consistent but wouldn’t help the kitchen as much. Like the chef said, even korma is different from region to region but we mostly know it as a sweet cashew based creamy stew.
Ramsay often sounds borderline racially insensitive.
No one cares. Go back to America with all that.
Quit being offended for others.
Mate, this was like 15+ years ago when attitudes were different. Imagine being non-Indian and offended for actual British people of Indian descent 15 years later. Ramsay is also more tamed as the years go by as he adjusts his behaviour to what is perceived as appropriate over time.