RICHARD FRANK June 23, 1929-January 2, 2024
Restaurateur and trade spokesman Richard Frank personified the restaurant trade in Melbourne for many years. He was a pioneer and a frontrunner, and an exemplar of the success of post-war immigrants.
He was born in Warsaw, prematurely, and spent the primary weeks of his life in cotton wool. He was the oldest of three youngsters, and remembered the invasion of Poland in 1939, and the next months. His grandfather was crushed, as was his mom; the household home was ransacked and robbed. His father joined the Polish military, then escaped from it and located his technique to Lithuania. He despatched a letter outlining a daring plan: a girl would assist to information his spouse and one of many youngsters to Lithuania, the thought being that the opposite youngsters would comply with a fortnight later. Richard was the oldest little one, and together with his truthful hair and blue eyes, didn’t look Jewish. He was deemed much less of a threat for that first journey than his dark-haired brother or little sister.
The hazardous journey didn’t go based on plan, however Richard and his mom made it to Lithuania. There was no different escape for the remainder of the household. He didn’t see his grandparents or his siblings once more. He stated his mom’s grief was so immense it was years earlier than she may converse of her misplaced youngsters. He may discuss them solely hardly ever.
They left Lithuania due to the Japanese consul, Chiune Sugihara, who signed transit papers that enabled them (and 1000’s of others) to cross Russia. They have been in Japan for a short time, the place Richard first learnt English at a Franciscan monastery faculty, after which went to Shanghai, which was a free port in Japanese-occupied China. When US troops liberated Shanghai in 1945, he learnt to drive a jeep, and American-accented English. Someday after he arrived in Australia, he was instructed roughly to return the place he got here from. The irony was that his accent triggered the outburst: “Bloody Yank!”
The household got here to Australia as a result of his father had cousins in Melbourne, and he took to Melbourne with the power and drive of somebody who felt he had been given a brand new life.
His first hospitality enterprise was a small cafe in Little Collins Avenue referred to as Fancourt, in partnership with a widow. He was about 20, and his solely expertise within the hospitality trade had been a brief stint as a night waiter on the Victoria Resort, after his daytime job in a carpet manufacturing facility. There was nonetheless meals rationing after they took it over. He used to joke it was the simplest and most worthwhile place he had ever owned: “Folks have been so happy simply to get a sandwich and a pot of tea.”
Richard Frank exterior Lazar within the early Nineteen Eighties.Credit score: Fairfax Photographic
The subsequent was a basement in Queen Avenue, an public sale room that he become a lunchtime restaurant referred to as Rick’s within the late Fifties. It was the primary BYO in Melbourne, due to a loophole. The proprietor of the close by Rhinecastle wine retailer instructed him that though liquor couldn’t be bought legally within the restaurant, there was no regulation to ban ingesting. If a waiter went to purchase a bottle of wine from the wine retailer, it may very well be introduced in.
First BYO, then the primary consuming locations within the bowling alleys that have been new to Melbourne, the place he discovered that every location had its personal tastes (hamburgers in Moorabbin, shashlik in Footscray, pies in Heidelberg, steak and salad in Hawthorn).