Red Rooster, oPorto set to join fast food chains that have come and gone in Melbourne
RED Rooster is poised to join the long list of fast food franchises that have risen, reigned and fallen in Melbourne’s suburbs. Here are 11 food chains that didn’t quite go the distance.
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FAST-FOOD chains Red Rooster and Oporto are facing closure, but they’re not the only budget eateries to rise and fall in Melbourne’s suburbs. Here are 11 suburban chains that were once well-known, sometimes for all the wrong reasons.
BARNACLE BILL
The seafood chain restaurant was almost as popular as Maccas in Melbourne during the eighties, but its fame was short-lived, and after a few years the chain’s Victorian restaurants closed.
Who would’ve thought a seafood chain would fail in a city renowned for its fish and chip shops?
The chain is still successful in South Australia though.
FASTA PASTA
If you wanted pasta quick and cheap in the 90s there was only one place to go — actually there were thousands of places to go, which is probably why “Italian” slop house Fasta Pasta didn’t succeed.
Essentially it was Sizzler-grade pasta (more on Sizzler below) served a la carte, so was always destined to fail. Despite being dreadful it managed to survive well into the 21st century.
Inexplicably there is still one Fasta Pasta located in Mildura.
DIAL-A-DINOS, PIZZA HAVEN AND EAGLE BOYS
Anyone who lived in Melbourne in the 80s would remember Dino’s fleet of delivery cars — they had a giant red telephone on the roof — zipping around suburban streets.
The chain was so successful that its main competitor, Pizza Hut, bought it out in 1987 so it could become the mother of all pizza chains.
But from the ashes of Dino’s rose Pizza Haven, which became the Hut’s main competitor until it was bought out by Eagle Boys in 2008.
The latter eventually closed its last store in May 2017, shortly after the company was acquired by, you guessed it, Pizza Hut.
MELBOURNE'S FORGOTTEN FAVOURITES
DENNY’S AND TACO BELL
American franchises have long targeted Melbourne with varying degrees of success, Domino’s Pizza and McDonald’s are prime examples of fast food chains dominating but did you know US diner juggernaut Denny’s made a failed attempt to set up shop in the 80s and blink and you would have missed Taco Bell come in the late-90s and go by the mid-2000s.
Melbourne chef Tim McWilliam recalled working at the Doncaster Denny’s back in the 80s.
“It was pretty bad,” McWilliam said.
“Everything including the sauces and the vegies were bought in pre-packaged and pre-prepared, you didn’t need a qualification to work there.”
SIZZLER
All-you-can-eat restaurants were all the rage in the 90s and Sizzler was the king of a bad bunch.
The budget smorgasbord chain spread like wildfire through Melbourne suburbs in the mid-to-late nineties before imploding, rebranding to Bells, and then eventually closing down.
Its bland salad bar couldn’t fool the refined pallets of Melburnians forever.
Oh, they still have restaurants in Queensland though.
SMORGY’S
If you were alive in the 90s then chances are you visited the Polynesian-themed buffet restaurant Smorgy’s.
The chain’s tiki torches lit up our roads but the food was garbage — although not as bad as Sizzler, and an awesome venue if you were a kid.
The chain vanished in the early 2000s, and its large island-hut buildings with volcano-shaped entrances remained scattered across Melbourne long after the chain went belly-up.
They were lasting monuments of Melbourne’s short-lived passion for smorgasbord restaurants.
BILLABONG FAMILY BISTRO
The Billabong was a chain of Koala-themed restaurants taking up prime space at suburban pubs.
At a Billabong it was exciting waiting for your number to come up on the screen so you could go and fetch your chicken and chips and help yourself to the free salad bar.
Kids loved it because it had a playground, and we guess adults loved it because they could drink alcohol.
The last Billabong disappeared in the 90s, about the same time pokie machines came out.
THE KEG, LONE STAR STEAK HOUSE & SALOON
Goodbye Denny’s, hello the Keg.
The casual dining chain took root all over Melbourne in the 90s, replacing Denny’s sites before its too vanished without a trace.
Lone Star Steak House & Saloon venues began opening up around Melbourne around the same time as the Keg said sayonara.
However, the Texas-style eatery was not a hit with discerning Melburnians, and it wasn’t long before Lone Star rode off into the sunset never to be heard of again.
QUIZNOS AND CHILI’S
Subway’s poor submarine sandwich cousin Quiznos made a spectacularly atrocious launch in Melbourne before the Australian franchise of the American chain went out of business in 2006.
The collapse left many investors who believed they had bought into the next Subway, hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket.
In the head-to head battle with Subway, there really wasn’t a contest.
Chili’s was another chain of Tex Mex-style saloon restaurants which seemed to pop up everywhere a Lone Star was, but it also disappeared without a trace.
OLLIE’S FAMILY RESTAURANTS
The fried chicken chain was an institution around Melbourne through the 1980s before rival chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) swallowed it whole, putting it permanently out of commission in 1990.
WAGAMAMA
The UK-based Japanese noodle franchise opened its first store in 2002 but its entire Australian operation was kaput by 2013 when the company went into administration.
Did they really think they were going to corner the Melbourne noodle market?
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