A POPULAR Dunfermline restaurant is set to reopen next week, more than nine months after it was left devastated by fire and at a cost of over £200,000.

Indian eatery Ashiq’s, on Bridge Street, is ready to welcome back customers from Wednesday February 21 after the final touches to restoration work following the blaze were put in place.

Owned by Parasuram Sigdel, known as Ram, Ashiq’s – which provides a mixture of Indian, Nepalese, Himalayan and Pakistani cuisine – has been forced to undergo a complete overhaul after it was forced to shut its doors last year.

Fire crews rushed to the scene on Saturday May 20 to tackle the incident after flames were detected in the kitchen’s extractor fan just before midday.

Nobody was injured in the incident and, after two crews from Dunfermline Fire Station initially attended, a further four were called to the scene when the fire extended.

It was eventually extinguished two hours later but the damage was so severe that Ram said that he had to start from scratch in renovating the restaurant back to a position where it is ready to open.

He had hoped that would happen at the end of January but a burst pipe within the building caused a further delay.

It is now set to return to business next week and Ram, who recently opened another town centre restaurant, Basil on Carnegie Drive, told the Press: “We’ve had so many people ask us when we are going to open and we tried to at the end of January or early February, but a pipe burst which meant that we couldn’t.

“People have been waiting for news.

“We were fully booked (when Ashiq’s was initially planned to reopen) and that was within 5-6 hours after putting it on Facebook.

“Everything now is ready and we’ll open next Wednesday, which is nine months after the fire.

“We’ve had to start again and everything is completely new.

“It was totally destroyed; we had to rebuild and start from the outside at first, then replace the kitchen and everything.

“It has cost over £200,000, but that’s life.”

Ram, who added that he has retained the majority of his existing staff at Ashiq’s, opened his new venture Basil before Christmas before its official launch earlier this month.

Its dishes are inspired by head chef Bishnu Neupane, who joined from the critically acclaimed Michelin-starred restaurant Benares in London’s Mayfair.