Dan Andrews’ very awkward restaurant drama in Melbourne

Former Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and his wife were denied bookings at popular Melbourne restaurants during the Covid pandemic after facing backlash from the city’s hospitality industry over the state’s strict lockdown.

Restaurateur Chris Lucas said Andrews’ wife, Cath, called his venue, Hawker Hall, in Melbourne’s south-east, asked for a table, and he told her: “Sorry, this one isn’t available.”

He also revealed that Di Stasio, a famous Melbourne restaurant that is not part of his hospitality group, also refused Mr Andrews a booking for his birthday around the same period.

Both Lucas and Di Stasio’s owner Rinaldo Di Stasio have been outspoken critics of Andrews, especially in relation to his heavy-handed handling of the Covid lockdowns that crippled Melbourne’s hospitality industry.

‘Look, he has his own cross to bear, but we can’t agree on that, can we? We live in a democracy,” Lucas recently told the newspaper Australian Financial Statement.

When Andrews revealed in late 2020 that he planned to extend Victoria’s state of emergency for another 12 months, Lucas called it “catastrophic” for Australia’s cultural capital and said it was as if Andrews had “dropped a bomb”.

“He’s treating us like fools, quite frankly,” Lucas said at the time.

“I don’t think the Prime Minister has any sensitivity or compassion, and if he does, he certainly isn’t showing it.”

Restaurateur Chris Lucas of LUCAS Group with his daughter Holly, who is also the company’s brand manager

Lucas Group has a number of dining options in Melbourne, including Grill Americano, Kisumé, Society and Chin Chin.

“To simply come out and demand that these powers be given to him in an unprecedented form just smacks of insensitivity. Frankly, we’re sick of it,” Lucas said of Andrews’ militant Covid lockdowns.

He later said in 2022: “We are a shadow of the industry we were before Covid.

“Two years of lockdown have caused us so much trauma, not just financially, but emotionally, that it has left many scars in this city.”

Mr Di Stasio, meanwhile, took out a full-page ad in The Australian in late 2020 accusing the Dan Andrews government, along with the then Scott Morrison-led federal government, of abandoning the hospitality industry.

“The neglect of temporary visa workers, skilled taxpaying members of our workforce, is not only shameful, it will cripple hospitality and tourism in the future,” he wrote in the ad.

Popular Melbourne restaurant Di Stasio (pictured) denied Dan Andrews a table for his birthday party when restaurants were allowed to open during Covid-19

He said he worried his beloved industry was looking at “total ruin” and said “the political agendas had failed us.”

“I invite our leaders and you to come to the table and make a positive contribution,” he said.

It seems like that table just wasn’t with Di Stasio for Dan Andrews.

The restaurants weren’t the only places where Andrews took the fall following his controversial Covid approach.

Members of Melbourne’s prestigious National Golf Club on the Mornington Peninsula gathered last year to protest Andrews’ interest in becoming a member.

A letter to the club committee claimed that more than a hundred members had ‘taken a clear position against’ Andrews’ potential membership.

“I would like to be assured to myself and my fellow members that, should Daniel Andrews express an interest in joining the National Golf Club, his application will undergo the standard membership approval process,” the letter said.