Disappointed customers were surprised to learn that Southern California's nine Curry House restaurants, part of a chain that started more than three decades ago, have closed.
The restaurant chain started in 1983 in LA's Little Tokyo. The restaurants closed sometime between Sunday night and early Monday morning.
At the Gardena location, a sign on the door indicated the store was closed. It also informed employees when they could pick up their final paychecks.
The former general manager, Christian Ferrell, told NBCLA he left the Gardena location because he didn't feel supported.
"I left the company because I felt like I wasn’t being supported. I felt like I was running the store by myself. I was the only general manager, the only resource. It was a strain to find people to work here. I would find my own cooks found my own cashiers," he said.
He said things went downhill for the well loved restaurant chain after it was acquired by a company.
The restaurant chain's website was unavailable Monday morning.
"It caught all of us off guard," former employee Theadore Balaschak told Newsweek. "We were open the night before and yet moving people came at 6 a.m. They knew before any of us did that we were out of a job."
He said employees were informed of the closures Monday morning.
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Editor's Note: An employee at the company originally named in this article had told NBCLA that the company acquired Curry House, but in a follow-up email, the company said it handled "back-office functions like accounting and IT support" but never owned or operated the chain.
