How did Ravi lose the restaurant in EastEnders?
Walford East was supposed to be Ravi Gulati's way out. He and Suki Panesar bought the restaurant together in 2022, and for Ravi — played by Aaron Thiara — running it straight was his best shot at proving to Priya Nandra-Hart that he could be a stable partner and father.
Then the money vanished, the taxman arrived, and the shutters came down. Here's the chain of events.
The short answer
Ravi lost Walford East in summer 2025 when HMRC shut it down over unpaid tax. The restaurant itself wasn't the problem — the Panesar finances were. Bernie Taylor, having discovered that The Six had covered up her brother Keanu's death, targeted Suki for her leading role in it and drained the Panesar bank accounts. With the family's money gone, the tax bill couldn't be paid, and the business was finished.
What it did to Ravi
Everything that followed flowed from that closure. Desperate for cash and with the whole family looking to him, Ravi went straight back into the drugs trade — the exact life the restaurant was meant to save him from.
"After Bernie drained the Panesar bank accounts, Ravi's a desperate man," a show insider told Digital Spy in 2025.
The consequences piled up fast: a stash hidden at The Arches, the dangerous dealer Okie, Harry Mitchell's kidnap and addiction, and eventually Ravi leaving Walford altogether for his family's safety before returning at the end of 2025 — into a revenge plot, police-informant deal, and a spiralling mental health crisis that has dominated his 2026 storylines.
What happened to the building?
It sat empty for months. George Knight — fresh from losing both The Queen Vic and his marriage to Elaine — tried to buy it, had his offer rejected, then got the deal over the line with investment from Nicola Mitchell. The restaurant reopened on 2 April 2026 under a new name: Knight Fusion.
Hasn't that restaurant been cursed before?
Repeatedly. The site has churned through owners like no other business on the Square: Ian Beale's original Ian Beale @ Le Square, Janine Butcher's Scarlett's, Beales, then the Walford East name coined when Ian and Masood Ahmed went into fusion food together in 2018, before Max Branning, Kathy and Peter Beale, and finally Suki and Ravi all took their turns.
Ravi is just the latest name on a long list of people that building has chewed up. George Knight might want to check the small print.