Coronavirus: fine dining launch with a Gimlet eye on restrictions

Imagine opening a multi-million-dollar restaurant right now, with everything that’s happened in the past four months.

Restaurateur Andrew McConnell, centre, with head chef Allan Doert Eccles, venue manager Shane Lazzo, beverage director Leanne Altman and barman Cameron Parishat the soon-to-open Gimlet in central Melbourne. Picture: Paul Jeffers

Imagine opening a new, multi-million-dollar CBD restaurant right now, with everything that’s happened in the past four months and so much uncertainty ahead.

Andrew McConnell’s glamorous new Melbourne dining room Gimlet, which opens next week, may just prove to be the hospitality industry’s equivalent of a war baby: conceived with good intentions, delivered at a very difficult time in history.

When Gimlet opens in Russell Street in the art deco Cavendish House — an investment in stylish dining aimed at the top end of town (and anyone else with a spare buck) — it will almost certainly be Australia’s first new post-COVID restaurant.

It should be a happy time.

But on Saturday, when Victoria’s government extended emergency restrictions postponing the 50-patron limit on restaurants that was due to come into effect on Monday, the chef and influential restaurateur felt “gutted, a nightmare. A complete head-f..k”.

McConnell, who has a string of restaurants, pubs and food businesses in Melbourne, signed the lease 12 months ago with the vision for an upscale bar/dining room; his original launch date was February.

Then COVID sent a dose of salts through the industry.

“Yesterday was meant to be a pretty important date for the whole industry, a bit of a lifeline,” he said. “It goes beyond just bums on seats and loss of revenue. It’s the cost of setting up, the casual staff who now don’t have that work. Loss of thousands of jobs. Also the farmers, suppliers, they’re suffering. All of their ­orders, cancelled … we thought we were out of the woods, to a degree.”

The show will go on: McConnell says he’ll play the cards he’s been dealt. But when COVID hit, most restaurateurs with projects on the drawing board for 2020 shelved them as the pressing matter of keeping existing businesses afloat took on new, and in some cases disastrous, dimensions.

For McConnell, whose many ventures include Cumulus Inc, Super­normal and The Builders Arms, the die was cast. There was, he said, no consideration of postponing opening. The money had been spent (“I’ve spent more here than I have on any other restaurant … let’s just say it was a pre-COVID budget, millions”).

It also meant putting off staff who had already been employed before one salad had been tossed, one martini shaken. There was no JobKeeper.

“When is the right time? Is there ever a right time to open a restaurant? We were ready to go a week before lockdown so right now, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

McConnell said he felt the industry had made a significant ­effort to comply with safety codes and that diners had responded well. “When people sit down in a space after having their temperature taken, they feel as if they’re in a safe environment.”