Now nobody is saying apologies are easy, but nobody seems terribly impressed by food site Delicious.com.au which has taken its sweet time to issue a mea culpa over that restaurant review by veteran critic John Lethlean.
Bite-sized version: Lethlean’s piece on a Perth eatery that included this gem “the maitre d’/meet and greeter wears an outfit that threatens to expose more than just her inexperience when she bends over to set a table”, sparked a storm of protest in the industry last month.
Despite the offending review being promptly taken down from the Delicious site, the controversy hasn’t gone away and has prompted much debate and commentary about the treatment of women in the hospitality industry.
Late last week, nearly a full month after the review was published, “the Delicious team” posted a note on its site, making a general apology and explaining that it already “reached out” to the restaurant in question with a direct apology over Lethlean’s “inappropriate sentence directed at a staff member”.
Case closed? No hope. Delicious’ online post, directing traffic towards its site, has had 360 responses – and counting – and it looks like the poor reception might cost more than a bit of grief on the socials.
High-profile chefs Christine Manfield, Mitch Orr and Simon Toohey were among those commenting negatively on the statement, joining hundreds of commenters, many of them unhappy with what they called the “clickbait” approach of directing anyone who wanted to read the apology to the Delicious site.
Manfield went further than most, calling for an industry-wide boycott of Delicious.
“Anyone with any integrity in the hospo industry should be jumping ship asap- disassociate to save your credibility,” Manfield wrote.
We asked Delicious editor Kerrie McCallum for a comment, again, and she didn’t get back to us. Again.
Lethlean – who has been copping so much over all of this that he’s shut down his Instagram account – didn’t respond to us on Monday either, but in a now-deleted social media post, he made his feelings, sort of, plain.
“I didn’t apologise,” the critic wrote. “Delicious did.”
FOOTY FRIENDS
CBD loves to see old adversaries come together, letting bygones be bygones, so our hopes are high for reconciliation, like really soon, between the participants in a vintage footy-coach-versus-journo confrontation.
The year was 2013, and Fremantle, coached by the then famously grumpy Ross Lyon, had just knocked over Geelong at their home ground, Kardinia Park – a rare occurrence indeed – when 3AW footy reporter Shane McInnes asked Lyon if his Dockers had, well, roughed-up the Cats, maybe just a little.
Lyon’s response has become a classic of the genre.
“What’s your name? That’s the best question you can come up with after two hours of footy? You’re quite brilliant, Shane, terrific,” the coach shot back.
Lyon later quipped that the exchange, which attracted some notice in the football world, put McInnes’ career on the map.
Ten years have passed, Lyon is back in Melbourne, coaching St Kilda – who have back-to-back Saturday night fixtures coming up at Marvel Stadium – and sporting a much more cuddly public persona.
So wouldn’t it be just lovely for Shane to interview Ross at one of those games? We think so, and McInnes and his colleagues at the station, owned by Nine, publisher of The Age, are keen.
“We’re trying to have me go down to the boundary line, do the interview with Ross, have a bit of a joke and kind of bring it all full circle,” McInnes told us. “He’s on a new beginning, so maybe our relationship can have a new beginning as well.”
Sounds like a beautiful thing, but the whole thing remains in the hands of the club’s media people and no decision has been made, we’re told.
PRIME MOVERS
There was quite the fuss in 2021 when the Malvern House lived in by the nation’s longest-serving prime minister Sir Robert Menzies and his wife Dame Pattie in their later years was torn down, and now it is our sad duty to report that another former prime ministerial pad will soon bite the dust.
On the upside, it’s not in Melbourne.
Mausoleum to owners past: Camilla Freeman Topper and Lady Sonia McMahon.Credit:John Shakespeare
Sydney-based fashion designer Camilla Freeman-Topper (of Camilla and Marc fame) has had her local council’s green light for a $5.2 million demolition and rebuild of former prime minister Billy McMahon’s historic mansion in the upmarket suburb of Bellevue Hill in the harbour city’s east.
The 1920s bungalow, which Freeman-Topper bought for $16 million in 2019, was where the famously average prime minister and his glamorous socialite wife Lady Sonia McMahon hosted many a soirée.
We’d like to say it wouldn’t happen in our town, but aside from the Menzies’ old pile, the Kew birthplace of Gough Whitlam came down in 2016, the Portsea estate where Harold Holt spent weekends was subdivided a few years ago to make way for two houses and his Toorak residence was levelled to make way for six (smallish) mansions.
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