CHILTERN restaurant, Posh Plonk, experienced a series of ups and downs during August, with their kitchen setting fire and restaurant winning a Diners’ Choice award all in one week. At around 12pm on Friday, August 16, they experienced a kitchen fire which resulted in their restaurant being closed for six days. The fire started when a lid fell off a boiling pot, hitting the gas pipes at the back of stove, causing gas to spill out, setting fire to a portion of the kitchen. The fire lasted around two minutes and caused significant damage to the stove and the nearby electronics and wires, but luckily did not cause any structural damage. Posh Plonk owner, Michael Moore, said emergency services arrived at the scene within minutes to get it under control. “We’re two doors down from the fire station and right next door to the police station in town so all the emergency services were here within minutes,” he said. “There were also some volunteer people that got buzzers on their pagers and were here within minutes to come help out.” Mr Moore said they worked tirelessly to clean up the damage and prepare the restaurant to open as soon as possible. “We had to spend all of Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday just cleaning everything off the wall, there was soot everywhere,” he said. “Essentially the whole kitchen had to be taken apart and rebuilt again to make sure everything had been cleaned and ready to go. “Then we had to start preparing all of our food over the course of the following week and by Thursday and Friday we started serving coffees and things again, but we had our full menu on by the Saturday the following week after the fire.” Mr Moore said they were able to open so quickly thanks to the overwhelming support of Chiltern locals. “We were assisted by the post office, they lent us their van so we could fill an esky with our high danger items like our milk and dairy and all our meat and things like that,” he said. “We took that down to the local butcher shop, who was able to store all of that in their cool room while we had no power at the venue. “After we posted about us being shut due to the fire, it was just the absolute outpour of people asking how they could help.” During the week of exhausting clean up, Mr Moore said they finally had some good news when they received the Diners' Choice: Best Overall Restaurants in Victoria Award on Open Table. “It was over that period we started opening again and we got that good news; it was a nice little motivation to get us back into things,” he said. Mr Moore said they were over the moon to receive the award after pouring their heart into the restaurant over the past year and that he would like to extent his gratitude to the Posh Plonk staff and customers. “The biggest thing is to thank the staff that we’ve got as part of the team, they put in everything,” he said. “We’d also like to thank the people who come in and leave reviews, it’s the glowing reviews that contributed to the award.”
