Coronavirus: Cluster puts the bite on eating out

After spending the lockdown renovating his eatery, Deni Rapattoni was ‘over the moon’ when he ­officially reopened his doors on Thursday.

Italian eatery owner Deni Rapattoni at Casula. Picture: John Feder

After spending the coronavirus lockdown — and a large swath of his savings — renovating his Italian eatery, Deni Rapattoni was “over the moon” when he ­officially reopened his doors on Thursday.

Less than 24 hours later, the excitement he had felt each time he picked up the phone was quickly turning to dread, as customer after customer cancelled bookings at his Casula restaurant, Pasta Italia Cucina, in Sydney’s southwest.

“We reopened last week after COVID catapulted us to renovate, but then we started hearing about the outbreak at Crossroads Hotel,” Mr Rapattoni, 44, said.

“A lot of our customers move between our restaurant and the pub so we had a lot of cancellations because ­people had interacted with family and friends who had been to the pub.”

As Mr Rapattoni was putting the final touches on his family-owned restaurant, health officials were quietly preparing to shut own the Crossroads Hotel, which is barely 600m from the restaurant’s front door.

Mr Rapattoni, who renovated to meet a pandemic-induced demand for takeaway food, said a second wave of COVID-19 in Sydney would “devastate” many small businesses.

“We’ve got about 20 staff and we just re-employed five people at the weekend,” he said.

“I hope I’m wrong, but my gut is telling me we’re going to be in a lockdown scenario by the end of the month. I just hope if we do follow the footsteps of Melbourne, the second lockdown won’t be as bad as the first because at least we’ll be a bit more prepared.”

In Casula, unease is growing among locals who fear the region is entering a new phase of contagion being fuelled by community transmission of COVID-19.

The usually bustling Casula Central shopping centre was ­eerily quiet on Monday as frightened business owners cut back operating hours and hundreds of residents entered self-imposed lockdowns.

Chan’s Canton Village, a Chinese restaurant across the road from the Crossroads Hotel, hastily put up a paper sign on Monday warning patrons they were not allowed to enter the restaurant to pick up takeaway orders.

Of those who braved the outdoors in Casula on Monday, many were wearing masks and some said they were leaving their homes only to get tested at the Crossroads Hotel pop-up clinic.