Melbourne’s elite party world: Cocaine cake icing, dog dos with Wagyu beef, $230K bar mitzvahs

Waiters were rostered at the bottom of a Toorak mansion’s stairs, to catch party guests who may fall after bathroom ‘activities’.

Private chef’s to Melbourne’s rich and famous have dished on their client’s bizarre demands.

Cocaine as icing on the cake, not figuratively, but literally. Dog parties with only Wagyu beef on the menu and bar mitzvah’s with a $230,000 food and fake snow budget.

Welcome to the wacky and weird world of our rich and famous, where no request is too outlandish, well almost, for our private chefs and caterers.

A private party inside our Toorak heartland famously had two cater waiters poised at the bottom of the mansion stairs, not to collect coats but for the sole purpose of catching guests taking a tumble when exiting the lavatory after going “bump” in the night.

While not usually considered the highest of moral arbiters, one corporate-turned-private chef declined catering a lavish shindig after the host requested cocktails and cake be laced with cocaine.

Waiters were positioned below stairs (not pictured here) at one Toorak party to prevent guest injuries after bathroom visits.

But the cocaine clan have since moved on to slimmer pastures.

One caterer whispered between canapes that it’s not tough economic times and the tightening of purse strings that has seen a dramatic decrease in portion sizes, but waistlines.

“Entertaining has never been easier since coke in the ’80s,” they laughed juggling an arancini ball in one hand and a champagne flute in the other.

“No one eats anymore due to Ozempic. Hostess and guests just jab-n-go, martini in hand. Shaken or stirred, no olive required.”

Orders for lobster rolls and crab cakes have shrunk by half as guests gather for dinner parties.

Once top gorgers, guests born with not just a silver spoon, but the whole dinner set in their mouths are now declining the silver tray on rotation.

Not since Botox or Viagra (also readily consumed by the same affluent set) has a pharma drug been so craved.

Be careful, the icing sugar might actually be cocaine.

Chemists have declared a national shortage of the diabetic weight loss wonderdrug Ozempic, but not so inside the rendered walls of 3142 where they jab together.

And don’t forget the pampered pooches. Former Michelin star chefs have now resorted to sourcing Blackmore Wagyu beef, not for their clients dinner plates, but the dog bowl.

One private chef told Page 13 they were only allowed to serve the mongrel a wagyu marble score of 9 plus and no less, or else, for their mutt.

Another said nothing shocked them anymore after catering a client’s dog’s “first birthday party”. Laughing they said “the little Shih tzu” wanted nothing to do with the party treats and dog-bone balloons, keeping to its kennel with its tail between his legs.

It’s the tail between the legs that can often get hosts in trouble, but those tales are for another time.

Caterer to the stars Peter Rowland told Page 13 the halcyon party days when up-market trucker Lindsay Fox and restaurateur Ronnie Di Stasio were throwing knees-ups well into the night are all but gone.

Some pampered pooches are dining on wagyu.

Rowland recalled the late, great Burt Bacharach was hired to perform at one of Fox’s birthday milestones but never turned up.

“Tony Charlton was the MC and said ‘Ladies and gentlemen Mr Burt Bacharach…

“But Burt never appeared,” Rowland said.

“He’d got lost in Lindsay’s garden… it’s a big garden.”

Forget a catering budget for a bar or bat mitzvah at Raheen for the Pratt dynasty.

Cost is not a barrier with singers Guy Sebastian and Cody Simpson most recently performing at Leon Pratt’s coming-of-age celebration.

Forget a table, guests could wander to a “dessert garden” within the stately, heritage-listed “little fort” (the Irish translation for Raheen).

Mazel tov!

Now it’s the tech lads returning from Silicon Valley who are trying to outdo each other in their renovated Toorak piles with cash, but little taste.

One chef was at a loss to explain the ridiculous: “I had a request for a menu for all food grown only above cloud level,” said one chef so dismayed at such wanton excess they have since thrown in their catering apron.

Pie in the sky? Nothing is off the menu.