St Kilda’s Cafe Di Stasio closes after 38 years: The exit interview

Restaurateur Rinaldo Di Stasio pulled an all-nighter Tuesday as champagne-filled celebrations for the sale of Cafe Di Stasio turned into a World Cup viewing party at 5 a.m.

This week the hive of Italian good times in St Kilda fell into the hands of one of its former chefs, Nathan Presley, who will reopen it as a seafood restaurant in August.

38 years later, 71-year-old Di Stasio’s Campari-soaked reign over the Fitzroy Street dining room has helped catapult Melbourne’s restaurant scene onto the global stage.

“When we went out at 2 a.m. the last night two weeks ago, I wasn’t upset,” he says. “St Kilda is not the same. It was probably time for us to leave.”

It was a 40-degree day on January 11, 1988, when Cafe Di Stasio opened without air conditioning and with 45 customers for lunch. The hot ticket in town at the time was Lynch’s Restaurant in South Yarra, which put on French cuisine with a starched tablecloth.

There were some great Italian restaurants in Melbourne that are testament to waves of Italian immigrants: the great Florentino on Bourke Street and Mario’s Restaurant by the sea in Brighton. But there was nothing quite like Cafe Di Stasio.

‘The restaurant is designed for gossip, relationships and fun. Eating was just part of it.’

Rinaldo Di Stasio at Cafe Di Stasio

Designed by long-time friend and collaborator architect Allan Powell, the walls were covered in contemporary Australian art paintings by Bill Henson, who also frequents the restaurant, and the staff wore flashy white jackets and bow ties.

The menu channeled an Italy that Di Stasio, born in Melbourne to Neapolitan immigrants, experienced during what he called his “doctoral year” while living in Naples and Rome. Dishes such as beef carpaccio with arugula were unfamiliar to people.

Jason Lui, Flower Drum’s general manager and a regular diner, describes the food as “Italian like no one else: simple and authentic.”

“You just wanted to eat a bowl of pasta,” Lui says. “But you ordered appetizers, dessert, and champagne. You spent three times what you wanted, but you left happy.”

Di Stasio sums up the restaurant’s appeal as “polite chaos.”

“There are two things people want in restaurants that they can’t get at home: Theater and having someone else do the dishes. Women sometimes say to me, ‘I can cook that at home.’ And I’d say, ‘No, you can cook much better, but you’d have to do the dishes. And it wouldn’t be as much fun.”

It was a hit from day one.

Recipe writer, food editor and then-St Kilda resident Jill Dupleix went for coffee the first day, realized it was a restaurant, not a cafe, and went back for lunch, then back again for dinner.

“It was a very important restaurant for Melbourne,” he says. “It was as if adults had suddenly arrived, setting a new standard in town. Ronnie cared deeply about what it was like to be an Italian restaurateur, and he unleashed that on the world.”

Before St Kilda, Di Stasio presided over the 500-seat, mosaic-tiled Rosati restaurant on Flinders Lane. It was the first restaurant to open on the CBD street, which has since transformed into a foodie mecca. Di Stasio, who owned the swanky venue for three years, broke down with his business partner and left. Ten days later, in September 1987, he signed the lease for the venue that would later become Cafe Di Stasio.

“When I opened Rosati, people thought I was crazy. Nobody paid attention to the city streets. But it was a block back from Collins Street, and instead of paying $3,000 a week in rent, I was paying $800. When I went to St Kilda, which was a pretty miserable suburb, people thought I was crazy again. But I figured it out.”

He brought with him a Rollodex of fans who filled the restaurant from lunch to dinner, as well as St Kilda locals: “Artists, drag queens, prostitutes.”

“The restaurant was designed for gossip, relationships and fun. Food was part of that,” he says.

There was absolute chaos.

Two years after its opening, Di Stasio was standing on the path outside when he noticed a woman he knew. It was 21-year-old Mallory Wall, a 21-year-old truant who frequently accompanied Rosati to school in Mentone and now lived nearby after working in London for two years.

He offered her a job and she started working immediately. His second night in the dining room was Valentine’s Day.

“I looked at the booking log,” Wall recalls. “130 people had made reservations. We were in a restaurant with 70 people and they were all arriving at 8 o’clock.”

Wall tried to bring some order to the chaos, and he and Di Stasio focused on their complementary skills in business.

“We discovered how to run a restaurant together, and we discovered each other,” he says.

The stars began waving through the front door with their distinctive bronze hands. Rolling Stones, Nick Cave (regular), Kevin Spacey, U2, Steve Martin, Barry Humphries, Marianne Faithfull.

“It was a frenzy. We would push the tables back and dance in the dining room; lunch would turn into dinner and then it would go on all night,” says Di Stasio.

At least once a week he would jump on a table and spray champagne around the room.

“It was always French, even though I tried to persuade him to use the cheap stuff,” Wall says.

It took a toll on Di Stasio. Seven years later, instead of opening a larger restaurant, he bought 32 hectares of land in the Yarra Valley and set about creating a house and a vineyard, also designed by Powell.

But there was debt, and Di Stasio says money was poured into upgrading the furniture, bathrooms and kitchen, even though the restaurant was busy.

“Then we started building in the country and real anxiety emerged. Things piled up. So I had to go and see a psychiatrist. We didn’t talk about anxiety as a society at the time, but after I was diagnosed, I got better. I took medication and continued treatment.”

‘You spent three times what you wanted, but you left happy.’

Jason Lui, general manager of Flower Drum restaurant

Eventually, the couple opened two venues to which they channeled their attention and passion: Di Stasio Citta, opened in 2019, and Di Stasio Carlton in 2021.

The property in the country sold for $7 million last year; The dispute with the Australian Taxation Office over a $1 million tax debt was later resolved.

“Young people always ask: ‘How do you do this?’ ‘Imagine you are on a tightrope, you have to walk from A to B,’ Di Stasio said. Just look at B. I say, ‘If you look down, you’ll die,'” says Di Stasio.

Upon the demise of Cafe Di Stasio, there was an outpouring of love from long-time customers, as well as many flowers and tears.

“It was like someone had died,” Wall says.

Frank Van Haandel, owner of nearby Stokehouse restaurant, thinks Cafe Di Stasio has ushered in a new wave of Italian restaurants in Australia. “It touched a lot of people. And it gave a lot of people, including me, one of the best nights they’ve ever had.”

The couple also has a quiet pride. “I’m proud of the longevity of the restaurant and my relationship with Mallory and the fact that we can still stay up all night,” says Di Stasio.

Di Stasio Citta and Di Stasio Carlton remain open for business.