Purnima Restaurant, also known as Dillons before Gordon Ramsey appeared there with his signature reality show called “Kitchen Nightmares”. This Restaurant was in complete disaster. The Restaurant served American-Irish-Indian food to its customers, but knowing the news shocked Gordon Ramsey that there was no chef qualified to prepare American food. The operational manager, Andrew, cooked all the food, which he was not qualified for.
Purnima (Dillons) Restaurant was a total nightmare when chef Gordon Ramsey checked into the kitchen. But after successfully rebuilding the Restaurant, some of you might ask, “What happened to Purnima Restaurant after kitchen nightmare.”
Well, after revisiting the Purnima Restaurant two blocks from Gordon’s New York Restaurant “London”. Chef Ramsey found it quite clean, and the food was Restaurant-grade, but it still got closed after two years.
In this blog post, we will talk about what happened to Purnima Dillons Restaurant after Kitchen Nightmares and how got Purnima Dillons Restaurant closed. Let’s return to the Kitchen Nightmares episode of the Purnima Restaurant in 2007 and see what happened afterward.
What happened in the Purnima Restaurant Kitchen Nightmares show?
Kitchen Nightmares is one of the most successful and most viewed cooking shows by one of the top chefs in the world, aka Gordon Ramsey. In the TV show Kitchen Nightmares, famous chef Gordon Ramsay visits struggling Restaurants to help them improve. He identifies their main problems, finds solutions to fix them, and gives the Restaurants a makeover, all within a tight timeframe of just 3 days.
In this episode at Purnima Dillons Restaurant in new york city, chef Gordon Ramsey visits them and finds out Mohammed is the owner of this Restaurant. Purnima Dillons Restaurant owner Mohammed started this Restaurant to make a new life for his family, but this Restaurant was losing 20,000 dollars a month.
This Restaurant had three managers, and I repeat, three managers along with Martin, the general manager, Andrew as the operations manager, and Khan as the floor manager. This Restaurant had a minimalistic design. Then Gordon Ramsey came to try the food. Martin came in front of the table and told Chef Ramsey that this Restaurant is “An American-Irish Restaurant with an Indian ness to it”.
Gordon was trying to make the flies go away while reading the menu that was served by Jenna. She informs Gordon that the Restaurant is rather quiet, and there are times when no customers come in because they see it’s empty and notice flies around. Chef Gordon Ramsey asked Jenna for sauteed vegetable appetizers, and for the main menu, he ordered lamb biryani, beef bhuna, and salmon sauce from the American side.
Gordon tried the fritters and called them “dried out turd”. After tasting, he found that the vegetarian appetizer had lamb meat. This was really shocking, and Jenna said if any vegetarian found this out, they could have expected a lawsuit against them.
The biriyani was served with a flower-shaped tomato which was rotten. Then he tried the beef bhuna and discovered that the beef Bhuna was not beef but lamb.
The salmon was cooked by the operation manager Andrew turned out to be overcooked and served with fried potato from a week ago. Since the Indian chefs are not skilled in cooking American dishes, the Operations Manager, Andrew, has to step in and prepare one of the dishes on the American side, which he does when there are any American-style food orders.
Gordon goes to the kitchen to give feedback to the chef and see what’s happening in the kitchen, and he finds out that the kitchen is also filled with flies.
He told the chef that he wasn’t happy about the lamb, and the chef told him that it might be because the lamb was old with being nervous. Andrew also tells Chef Ramsey that the chef of Dillons doesn’t know how to cook Western-style food.
While going through all of these, Martin, the general manager of Dillons (Purnima), was found laying down on the corner while a waitress was massaging his head which was quite unprofessional.
Gordon, who arrives for dinner service with a crowd, witnesses the customers struggling to decide between Indian and American dishes.
Then there was chaos in the kitchen, including unhygienic practices like a tub of chicken on the floor, which made gordon so angry, and no food was leaving the kitchen after almost an hour.
Andrew was leading the kitchen, but Khan was not contributing anywhere. General manager Martin was distracted by his mobile phone most of the time also when it was announced that there was no more salmon.
Then Chef Gordon Ramsey summons general manager Martin and accuses him of not doing his job and taking advantage of Mohammed’s money using an aggressive tone. The evening service continues to be disastrous, with unhappy customers leaving without being fed due to flies in the dining room, poor food quality, and lack of service.
The next day, during his inspection of the kitchen downstairs, Gordon finds dead flies in a flypaper trap, rotten meat and vegetables, and an infestation of cockroaches and rat droppings in the kitchen and basement. Gordon and Martin inspect the fridges and find a bag of salad filled with flies, green chicken wings that could harm customers, and a rotten tomato that was half-served. Gordon freaks out and immediately orders the kitchen to shut down and asks customers to leave.
He arrives later with a team of professional cleaners and exterminators to deep clean the Restaurant and dispose of all the contaminated produce. Gordon takes Mohammed and the managers to his Restaurant called “london” to show them the proper cleaning regime.
He introduces a new menu focused on modern Indian cuisine to Chef Gomez, and Chef Gomez gets overjoyed by seeing it and gives Gordon a really tight hug that Mohammed has to step in to stop him gently.
Gordon brings in Chef Vikas Khanna, a renowned Indian chef, to help with the new menu and train the staff at a Restaurant owned by Mohammed. The Restaurant undergoes several makeovers, which include changing Dillons to a new name called “Purnima,” meaning full moon.
During the relaunch, Martin, the current manager, fails to properly manage the staff, which results in cold food and customer complaints, which made gordon really frustrated. Then Gordon comes up with a plan, and he believes that Khan, the floor manager, a capable staff member, can take over the managerial role instead of Martin, and with Khan’s help, the relaunch is successful and comes to life.
Gordon then advises Mohammed to fire Martin and reduce the number of managers, but overhearing this, Martin quits instead, leaving Mohammed shocked by martins behavior.
Then Mohammed asked chef Vikas Khanna to be their Restaurant’s permanent consultant. After that, the Restaurant ran smoothly afterward for two years.
Purnima Restaurant after kitchen nightmare update
Purnima Restaurant, known as Dillons, ran smoothly after the kitchen nightmare. They were still in business for 2 years.
Although after that episode, Martin Hyde tried to sue Gordon Ramsey for $ 3 million, claiming that Gordon Ramsey ruined his career. Matin Hyde also filed a lawsuit on demand to stop the episode from getting aired, but the case was thrown out, as we know, because we saw the episode on television.
When Gordon revisited there a year later, he tried out the food, which was excellent, and chef Vikas Khanna was still in the kitchen. The Restaurant also had customers see their kitchens to show how clean and maintained they were.
But judging from food reviews, people didn’t like their food because they said it was overpriced and average. They also made complaints about the noise from the bar. After running two years after the kitchen nightmare episode, the Restaurant finally closed in 2009.
The consultant chef Vikas Khanna now works at Junoon Restaurant and has written over 30 cookery books. Vikas found massive success and appeared once again in one of Gordon’s shows, hells Kitchen, and hosted, challenging bobby flay and the Martha Stewart Show. Later he also became the judge of MasterChef India.
Operational manager Andrew became a blogger and a writer for Huff Post, and he co-writes cookbooks with Vikas.
Martin, the general manager, was rumored to be managing a car service company afterward.
Why did Purnima Dillons Restaurant close
We didn’t find any source of information about this matter. The Restaurant got closed only after 2 years of service after that episode. Mohammad, the owner of Purnima Dillons Restaurant, had problems with a neighbor who was considered to have caused damage to the Restaurant property, but it’s unclear if this issue contributed to the closing of the Restaurant.
Later on, the Restaurant turned into a comedy club named Dillons comedy club. Looked like Mohammed still had possession of the property.
Now of today, the place is taken by a bar called The Grisly Pear which turned out to be a bar and comedy club.
Final thoughts
Purnima, ex Dillons had a great run after Gordon Ramsey did a massive makeover, but they didn’t run long. They served good Indian food under the consultancy of chef Vikas Khanna. The Purnima Dillons Restaurant owner Mohammed was a great guy who was kind to his staff, but also, with his extreme effort, he couldn’t continue the journey for long.
After only two years, Purnima Restaurant Manhattan, new york, got shut down, and the reviews were not something we expected. The place turned into a bar now called The Grisly Pear.
Regarding everything, the episode Purnima Restaurant on Kitchen Nightmares was a hit. Which turned out to be 16 years before but still in our memories,
