Robert Marchetti's gig that didn't work

Embattled restaurateur Robert Marchetti broke cover from Bali at the weekend, stung by suggestions he had "fled" to escape scrutiny over the collapse of GAS at Crown Melbourne, which closed last month in a sea of debt. "I've been back and forward between Sydney, Canberra and Bali for one year now. I have been working between the three long before the issues in Melbourne."

The company behind GAS went into liquidation with debts in the order of $1.6 million in August. Subsequently, Marchetti and his backers sold North Bondi Italian to a group including celebrity chef Matt Moran for a figure believed to be about $1.5m; the restaurant Neild Avenue had been sold prior to the Melbourne liquidation, to Sydney's massive Keystone Group, while Marchetti's partner in butcher's shop La Macelleria, Peter Andrews, has taken over that business entirely.

As an owner, Marchetti is effectively out of the restaurant business. "I have had, like anyone that has been successful in Australia, a gig that didn't work, but mostly incredibly successful ones," he says. "North Bondi was sold, as was Neild Avenue, and the GAS lease was not renewed, to pay down some debts and focus on QT (hotels) and Double-Six (Bali)."

Marchetti claims that issues behind the complex financing of Neild Avenue triggered the problems that led to the GAS liquidation. As for GAS creditors: "It's all in the process of being sorted as best we can." Liquidator and Moore Stephens partner David Mansfield says the company had little in the way of assets. A major creditor is Crown, owed more than $200,000 rent; it also owns the restaurant's depreciable assets (fitout, kitchen equipment).

Marchetti is working with one of Bali's most prominent businessmen, Kadek Wirinatha, on three hospitality spaces at the massive Double-Six hotel in Seminyak still under construction. He says one of the Bali restaurants, Robert Marchetti's Plantation Grill, will open in Jakarta next year. He is also heavily involved with the people behind QT Hotels on their forthcoming Canberra launch and restaurant elements. He was in Sydney last week and is due back in Australia next week.

*    *    *

WHERE the big chefs go, so often do other personnel follow, and several Royal Mail Hotel staff have pledged allegiance to incumbent Dan Hunter as the chef sets up his new restaurant, Brae, in Victoria's Western District for a December opening. Restaurant manager Simon Freeman has moved across, as has Hunter's new sous chef, Damien Neylon, just back from three months at Mugaritz, Spain.

Brae will be a contemporary restaurant where visitors can interact with nature and eat from the land, we're told. It is set in the productive fields and gardens that was George Biron's Sunnybrae restaurant at Birregurra.

Meantime, a mass exodus from Penfolds Magill Estate Restaurant in Adelaide has seen five staff exit, heading for town, where former Magill executive chef Jock Zonfrillo is opening Orana in November in the former Universal Wine Bar premises. Zonfrillo and three of his new employees, according to Treasury Wine Estates (Penfolds owner), spent well over a year on the payroll at Magill while the restaurant was closed for renovation; Zonfrillo departed earlier this year (to be replaced by Scott Huggins) while the five who have just quit did so only several months into the restaurant's relaunch. A source inside the restaurant described the departure as "a blessing in disguise".

Source: The Australian, 1 October 2013