News on Tuesday that famed Beaumaris restaurant Lobster Cave was shutting marked the end of a culinary/political era.

The venue announced the closing of its doors “for the time being” in a thank-you message to customers.

“From the bottom of our hearts, we extend our sincere gratitude for 38 years of friendship, laughter and unforgettable memories shared at Lobster Cave,” the restaurant said on social media.

The lease will expire and Lob Nominees Pty Ltd, the current owner, will cease trading, it said.

The restaurant passed into political folklore in 2017 when the then state opposition leader, Matthew Guy, blew up his tough-on-crime image by dining over several bottles of Penfolds Grange with fruiterer and businessman Tony Madafferi, the alleged head of the Melbourne mafia.

The scandal led to “lobster with a mobster” headlines.

Madafferi has never been charged with any crime and denies being associated with the mafia, but police have named him numerous times in court as being a high-ranking member of the mafia.

The restaurant said in a post that it looked forward to welcoming patrons to a new location in the future. CBD has asked it for further details.

Melbourne Cup, Sydney launch

The Melbourne Cup carnival is galloping towards us, with Lexus launching its marquee and menu for this year’s carnival ... in Sydney.

The luxury carmaker flew key media (including a reporter from this masthead), its own staff and the Cup itself up from Melbourne for the event at Canvas restaurant in Sydney’s harbourside Museum of Contemporary Art.

Former MasterChef judge Melissa Leong (also a proud Lexus ambassador) took a break from promoting her memoir, Guts, to interview chef Josh Raine about his inspiration for the marquee’s food offering. Raine freely admitted he used ChatGPT to help him compose the menu.

Just because we view everything through the prism of interstate rivalry, CBD cheekily asked Lexus Australia chief executive John Pappas if the Sydney launch was just the latest shot fired in the ongoing war between Racing NSW, headed by Peter V’landys, and Racing Victoria. After all, Lexus was backing up from the AFL’s season launch in March at Sydney’s Luna Park.

However, over a lunch of kingfish sashimi and wagyu beef with smoked eggplant, Pappas assured us the bitter rivalry was “nothing to do with it”.

“To be honest we wanted to bring the Lexus Melbourne Cup, firstly, to Sydney,” he said. “We wanted to be able to showcase that Josh has worked in Sydney; his restaurants are here as well. We thought we’d like to do it in Sydney for those reasons, and make sure that we could showcase it more into the Sydney audience.”

Not to mention that Canvas is run by Birdcage marquee catering royalty the Big Group, headed by Bruce and Chyka Keebaugh, in their first foray into the Sydney hospo market. As we often say, everything is connected.

Open season

What do supermodel Tyra Banks, film star Jackie Chan, survival expert Bear Grylls and recording artist Leon Bridges have in common? They have been hauled in to tell us how wonderful the Australian Open will be when it lobs next January.

The launch of the Open (coinciding with general release ticket sales) was an exercise in superlatives.

Major Events Minister Steve Dimopoulos reeled off the economic benefits while nimbly avoiding the costs: 1.2 million visitors in January, 440,000 hotel room nights, bringing in $566 million to the state.

Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley took to the stage in Docklands with giant video screens replicating Rod Laver Arena, right down to the retractable sunroof.

The headline was the Million Dollar 1 Point Slam, a mass participation competition in which amateurs compete against pros in an elimination contest where winning a single point will net the ultimate winner $1 million in prize money.

The courtside bar will be extended and revamped, 5000 tennis racquets will be given away to kids and US chain Shake Shack will operate for the first time. Simon Rogan, from UK restaurant L’Enclume will operate an eatery in the AO Reserve. The Kid LAROI, and The Veronicas will perform concerts.

Our favourite moment during the presser was when a TV news journalist asked Tiley about the epoch-defining competition between Jannik Sinner and his bitter rival Carlos “Alcatraz”.

Tory Tony

Tony Abbott has been very busy.

As CBD reported recently, the former prime minister turned industrious Substacker is launching his new history of Australia in Melbourne next week, despite the city’s reputation as an unsafe space for conservatives.

But this week, Abbott has been further north. A good deal further north, it turns out, in Manchester at the British Conservative Party conference, where he was set to address the troops in dialogue with UK shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel on Tuesday afternoon (UK time).

As some local observers quipped, Abbott’s appearance meant there were more former Australian PMs addressing the conference than former British PMs. And the Tories have plenty of those, cycling through five PMs in less than a decade, a revolving door that put the Abbott-era Liberal Party to shame. But much like Abbott’s Liberals, most former leaders are burdened with too much baggage to show their face at such things.

Abbott, the perennial Anglophile, had a close friendship with Liz Truss, who before going on to serve a disastrous 44 days in No. 10 gave Abbott a trade adviser gig, which he lost after Labour swept into power last year. Abbott also wrote a reference for current opposition leader Kemi Badenoch during her push for the top job.

Abbott’s speech came a week after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addressed UK Labour’s conference in Liverpool, where despite plenty of angry shrieking from the Libs at home, he received a rockstar reception from his British comrades. Next to Britain’s Keir Starmer, the country’s most unpopular PM on record, with all the charisma of a toothbrush, just about anyone looks inspiring.

Not so fresh

The only people in Australia to have as disastrous an election campaign as the federal Liberals were the political consultants at Freshwater Strategy, who conducted the internal polling for the party that convinced enough insiders that Peter Dutton had a decent chance of winning.

Instead, Anthony Albanese won 94 seats, leaving the pollsters with egg on their faces. Freshwater landed the Liberal contract after the party’s long-term strategists, CT Group, stepped away. Conservatives never quite vibed with that firm’s work on the Indigenous Voice to parliament Yes campaign.

Now, as the Liberals figure out when and how they can potentially decouple from Freshwater, the pollster has lost another client, after being dumped by our stablemates at The Australian Financial Review.

CBD hears the Fin is shifting its political polling to Redbridge and Accent Research. Redbridge, a bipartisan firm run by former Labor strategist Kos Samaras and Liberal Tony Barry which works with largely corporate, rather than political, clients, had a far better campaign than Freshwater, with its polling pointing to a Labor win. And after seeing what happened to Freshwater, it knows exactly what the price of inaccuracy is.

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