Stalactites Restaurant has been inundated with inquires over a video that has gone viral on the internet, showing two groups of men exchanging punches, flipping tables and breaking chairs late one night.
The incident actually happened five years ago, Stalactites Manger Nicole Papasavas tells Neos Kosmos, and was dealt with by authorities extremely quickly. She’s been receiving calls since the start of the week, while customers have been coming into the restaurant to see if things are ok, and to get the inside gossip.
“It’s old news,” Mrs Papasavas says of the incident.
“It’s the nature of the internet. It was half a decade ago, the city has changed a lot since then.”
Mrs Papasavas says the restaurant kept operating all through the night after the perpetrators were dealt with.
“We packed up and within 20 minutes we were serving customers again because the place was packed and there were lines outside the door,” she says.
The video has been picked up around the world and by local media. Popular website Elite Daily and the Huffington Post all picked up the story, while almost every local media outlet included the footage in their nightly news.
Social media lit up with comments, with twitter user Shannon Lindsey joking “you need to be pretty tough to order a kebab in Melbourne” and Guido Hatzis likening the brawl to the “elimination final of the Greek version of ‘my restaurant rules”.
People have hit back at the snide comments of a particular patron who can be overhead in the video, saying “can I get a refund for my souvlaki?”
Mrs Papasavas says most people would have gotten refunds, with staff apologising for the unrelated incident.
Read the full interview in Saturday’s Neos Kosmos.