restaurantMystery Diners · Season 9, Episode 5 · Aired March 4, 2015
Hot Red Bus
Alhambra, California
Closed. The business shut its doors.
What happened after
Yelp marks the listing CLOSED with a 'Try Our New Menu' tag, indicating the space/concept has turned over.
What happened on the show
Sonny and Sage Sehmi kept hearing that Indian food was coming out of their Alhambra restaurant, which serves none, and that the place was open on Sundays when it should be closed. Charles Stiles sent a single mystery diner, Kendall, in as a food blogger, with investigator Patrick confirming the scheme. As aired, Sonny's brother, fired months earlier, had been running a reservation-only pop-up called The Wandering Elephant inside the restaurant with the manager and head chef, serving bootleg versions of the owners' own upcoming sauce and soliciting sixty-five dollars or more per guest. The confrontation has the owners firing the manager and chef and barring the brother. Given the scripting claims that later dogged Mystery Diners, this restaurant-within-a-restaurant sting is best framed as broadcast rather than as verified.
After the cameras left
Hot Red Bus has since closed. A Yelp listing marks the Alhambra spot at 31 East Main Street closed, its space apparently turned over to a new concept, at medium confidence in our 2026 pass, with some delivery aggregators still showing stale active listings. A small independent giving way to the next tenant is ordinary lifecycle, not the residue of a pop-up sting. The show filmed one night of a family and a bootleg sauce; the closure came later and on its own timeline.
Sources
Confidence: medium. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.