It is time Chris Lucas shut up and stopped sooking.

Hey Chris Lucas.

Cease your endless whinging would you?

Concentrate on cooking, the thing you’re good at.

And if you must open your overexposed mouth say something positive about Melbourne, the city you claim to love so much.

For those so far unaware of the existence of Chris Lucas, he’s a Melbourne-based restaurateur with a range of popular high end eateries like Chin Chin, Hawker Hall and Society.

He’s also a media tart rent-a-quote for journalists upset that, like nearly everywhere else on Earth, Victoria experienced COVID and responded with public health measures like lockdowns.

It is entirely fair that Chris is upset that his businesses suffered during COVID and the associated lockdowns.

We all suffered during lockdown.

Thousands of businesses suffered. Kids missed school, people missed loved ones, some folks couldn’t go to the funerals of beloved family and friends.

We all wish COVID hadn’t happened. Chris isn’t the only one who did it hard.

But the vast majority of us just got on with it. Like we’re getting on with our lives now.

Not Chris. In his unhappy and angry world, it is always July 2020.

On February 17, Chris wrote in the Herald Sun:

“Today Melbourne, once the world’s most liveable city, is a shadow of its past glory. Our city remains largely empty, thousands of small businesses have been destroyed, our famed restaurants, events, arts and music culture all but obliterated.”

Sounds apocalyptic, and nothing like the city we see every day.

But Chris is a successful businessman who … hang on, we’re being handed a note … he’s opening a new restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD?

Which is it Chris?

Why would a man styling himself as such a visionary business leader be opening a new restaurant in a city that has been “all but obliterated”?

It just doesn’t make sense.

Nor apparently did the payslips of staff at his restaurants who were allegedly underpaid.

Lucas says it didn’t happen, but leading Victorian journalists Royce Millar and Ben Schneiders found evidence to the contrary.

Through lawyers, Mr Lucas “vehemently” denied there were underpayments and said workers had been repaid in full – a claim disputed by a number of staff members interviewed by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Chris went on to sook further:

He complained about media reporting of underpayments in the restaurant industry, said the employment law was too “complex”, and it was “almost impossible for even the most professional organisation to be totally compliant”

Hold up.

If Chris doesn’t think ANY hospitality organisation – even the most professional! – can be expected to manage complex tasks like er, paying their staff properly, surely he’d cut governments a bit of slack as they try to manage a pandemic that’s ripped through the entire planet.

Apparently not though. Either Chris is an idiot or operating in bad faith.

And indeed, as the meme has it, why not both?

Time to zip it, Chris.

Victorians are by and large positive community minded people who are getting on with life in what is hopefully the closing stages of a brutal pandemic.

Your continual bleating and doing down is not only ugly and annoying, but deeply hypocritical.

Stop it.

And go get our dinner.