Anthony Albanese and Dan Andrews spotted dining at Flower Drum

Waiters at the famed Flower Drum were excited to serve PM Anthony Albanese this week, but they didn’t have a clue about his rumoured dining partner, former premier Dan Andrews.

Labor colleagues and former housemates Daniel Andrews and Anthony Albanese get together for a barbecue. Photograph: Twitter

PM Anthony Albanese and former Victorian premier Dan Andrews once shared a house and have been friends for more than 25 years.

So a sighting at Melbourne’s old-school networking restaurant, the famed Flower Drum on Little Bourke St on Thursday night, is not completely out of the question.

While our spies said waiters were in a flurry over serving the Australian Prime Minister, they didn’t have a clue about Dan, giving it a “Dan who?”

Oh the humanity. One of Australia’s longest-serving premiers forgotten so soon.

The PM was in Melbourne earlier on Thursday on the Bellarine Peninsula with MP Libby Coker.

Sighting of our corporate bigwigs, celebrities and colourful characters are certainly not uncommon at the Chinatown institution opened back in 1975 by Gilbert Lau.

Just ask Eddie McGuire who was spied at the high-end Chinese restaurant with underworld figure Mick Gatto on Melbourne Cup day in 2021.

Eddie McGuire, back left, and Mick Gatto, were pictured at Melbourne’s Flower Drum restaurant in the background of a Melbourne Cup celebration. The table at the front of the photograph includes the 2021 Melbourne Cup, with part owner Brae Sokolski and his partner Chloe Frost toasting Verry Elleegant’s win. Picture: Supplied

The pair were spotted in the background of a photo of Brae Sokolski, part owner of Melbourne Cup winner Verry Elleegant, at the acclaimed restaurant as they drank toasts with the trophy.

The former Collingwood footy club president and Gatto said it was a chance meeting.

“If I was going to have a secret meeting with Mick Gatto, I wouldn’t have had it at the Flower Drum in cup week,” McGuire told this paper at the time.

“And I wouldn’t be sitting in the middle of the restaurant.’

Back to Andrews and Albo, who posed together at a barbecue during the election campaign. The photo was later labelled “Fake-Steak Gate” because the barbecue wasn’t firing and the steaks weren’t grilled.