Momma Cherri's, the restaurant that shot to fame on TV's Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, has gone into administration.

Mounting debts of £200,000 and spiralling costs forced owner Charita Jones to take steps to keep creditors at bay.

Her Big House restaurant was closed during the festive period while details of the handover were put together.

Mrs Jones said she had been a victim of her own success since the original Soul Shack, in Little East Street, Brighton, appeared on the Channel 4 show in 2004.

The company expanded too quickly into bigger premises, called Momma Cherri's Big House, to cope with the extra demand from customers.

Mrs Jones, 52, said: "The building is costing us too much in that we never got a loan from the bank when we took on the property.

"We were running the Shack and the Big House for a whole year. We had a building for a whole year that we couldn't sell. We still had to pay the rents and the rates. We were paying for a building that was closed.

"We went from ten employees to 30 and the building that we took on had so many hidden problems.

"It was bigger and better though and I just wanted to be able to feed as many people as I could. But with the book deal, the television and all the promotion I was doing I took my eye off the ball and was not available at the restaurant.

"We took professional advice and decided that the best way forward would be to place the company into administration.

"However, the restaurant will reopen on Saturday run by a new company owned by my daughter, Katryna, operating under licence from the administrators with a view to achieving a sale of the business."

Mrs Jones bought the lease for the Big House 18 months ago with the hope of securing a bank loan to help with start-up costs for the new restaurant.

But banks would not lend the money and she had to take out several smaller loans to pay for equipment, decor and furniture.

She was also unable to sell the Soul Shack.

Paying back the loans on top of the £7,000-a-month lease proved too much of a financial burden.

Mrs Jones, who was named 2006 entrepreneur of the year at the Sussex Business Awards and has become a local celebrity, said the business was hit with maintenance and equipment problems.

She said: "We were plagued with bad luck."

Accountants Andrew White and Susan Maund, from the Crawley office of Baker Tilly, have been appointed joint administrators of the company while Katryna looks after the restaurant.

All future bookings will be honoured.

Ms Maund said: "It's very important that the restaurant continues to trade and we hope the community will support the management team as we work behind the scenes to find a suitable purchaser who can take the business forward."

Mrs Jones said: "I'm just sorry for the disappointment that this has caused but I am going to do my best."

richard.gurner @theargus.co.uk

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