Taste of India burns in Hopkins

A popular restaurant in Hopkins Village in the south is no more following an early morning fire that gutted the establishment. Taste of India, a quaint restaurant along the coast in the village, went up in flames just after midnight on Tuesday. It’s a loss of approximately seventy-five thousand dollars says restaurant owner and chef, John Solomon. Even more painful for Solomon is that he had not insured the restaurant. He spoke to News Five today about the series of events leading up to the fire.

Via Phone: John Solomon, Fire Victim

John Solomon

“I live in Dangriga, but every day I travel from Dangriga to Hopkins and go cook and come back the same night. So when I went on Tuesday evening, B.E.L. had disconnected my light. The Wednesday morning I went and I spoke in office and I paid the light bill and they told me that they would send somebody by the afternoon. So I went back to Hopkins; I was waiting for them. In the afternoon I called back the office and they said that they would send somebody by four o’clock. Then before four who supposed to come didn’t come; he sent somebody else. The guy who came said he would take out the red tag and tomorrow the original guy would come to put back the green tag. So when he take out he meter, he told me to shut down everything because some time it can get short and catch fire. So I shut down everything and put it back. After one minute, I put it on and everything was okay. So I waited half a hour and I closed my restaurant and I came back to Dangriga. I was there and I slept and around twelve-thirty, the police officers from Hopkins dehn cal me and they said Mister Solomon your building catch fire and it is destroyed. So immediately I went all the way to Hopkins and I saw everything was destroyed. I have an Indian restaurant for the past eight years. The building totally destroyed. In front of the building had a thatch, all my tables, all my kitchen equipments totally destroyed, destroyed, destroyed; nothing is there, everything is burned up.”

Up to news time, the cause of the fire is not known.