Popular high street food chain faces closure of UK restaurants

A popular restaurant chain that won Come Dine With Me may have to close a number of UK high street branches over an unpaid £1.6million tax bill to HMRC. The Conconut Tree restaurant chain entered administration last week after defaulting on payments on a Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA), The Sun reported.

The business owes more than £1.36million in VAT and over £230,000 in PAYE national insruance contributions to HMRC official papers show. The Coconut Tree was founded by five Sri Lankan brothers and friends on a mission to bring their culture's cuisine across the world.

The chain now has nine localtions across England and Wales in places like Bristol, Bath, Oxford, Reading and Cheltenham and won many awards for their food. Co-founders, Rashintha Rodrigo and Shamil Fernando even appeared on the Channel 4 show Come Dine With Me - The Professionals in 2022.

In the spin off from the amateur verison of the show, professional chefs go head to head in order to win a £1,000 prize. The Coconut Tree chefs scored an incredible 38/40 and won the show with their generations old family dishes. The menu included egg hoppers, crispy fried lamb balls and three different Sri Lankan classic curries: dhal, mango, chicken or cashew.

Top food critic Jay Rayner recently reviewed the restaurant and said: "It's easy to see why it's succeeded. There is a raucous rough-edged enthusiasm to the food. All of which comes at great speed in white and blue prison-style enamelware.

"The Coconut Tree manages that rare trick of being totally laid-back and completely on point at the same time. It also happens to tell a terrific story about Sri Lanka; one that comes with a small bill to finish. That's a perfect happy ending."

Despite the great reviews and TV success, head of marketing at The Coconut Tree Helen Coen said earlier this year that the CVA "hasn't worked as we would had hoped, which given the economic climate and the way that restaurants are struggling, isn't really a great surprise.

"The Cheltenham restaurant has always been and continues to be popular. We hope that that there's a way that this can continue. There's a lot of staff that are certainly hoping for this too. We unfortunately can't say anymore than that at the moment."