Crown Lagers, Ivana Trump and prawn cocktails: Remembering the iconic Danny's Seafood

The Age

22-05-2025

Out front, he was all charm; on the pass he was a beast with zero time for nonsense, smashing his little gold bell the moment a dish was up and dressing down anyone who didn't rush to its tinny siren call.
'Your father had a go at me a few times, sure, but it always came from the standards he wanted to set for customers,' Kiriakopoulos says. 'He taught me so much: Make the customer feel welcome, ensure they have the best time, and if something goes wrong, fix it.'
While La Pa was the main event, there were side quests. The first came in 1992 when dad took over the Grotta Capri in Kensington for two years. Built in the 1950s, the Grotta looked like an underwater cave inside, with cement stalactites hanging from the ceiling, plastic crustaceans clinging to its craggy walls, and an exterior covered by an acne-like breakout of oyster shells. A review from before dad's time described it as 'one of Sydney's great monuments to bad taste'.
Famously, the production crew for Muriel's Wedding took over the venue for several days in 1993, transforming one section into the Porpoise Spit cocktail bar where Muriel's friends tell her they don't want to hang around with her any more. 'Toni Collette had to keep her weight on, so I made milkshakes for her the entire shoot,' dad says.
More famously, perhaps, the restaurant was a favourite of Sydney's underworld, attracting what Bruce, a former Hong Kong cop in addition to his other pursuits, euphemistically describes to me as 'various well-known racing world figures'. I always wondered what deals they made there, gorging on oysters in a rocky nook, with only a rubber crab to bear witness.
Amanda Bilson, wife of the late Tony Bilson – the legendary chef known to some as 'the Godfather of Australian cuisine' – first met dad in the late 1990s. He had stepped away from La Perouse again, this time to open the first restaurant in the Bondi Beach Pavilion, and the Bilsons would stop in.
Dad seemed nice enough, but Amanda didn't think much about him until late 2011. By that stage, dad had been back in La Perouse for a decade and business was once again thriving.
For Tony, it was a different story. Just a few weeks after earning three chef's hats in that year's Good Food Guide, his Sydney CBD restaurant Bilson's went into receivership, along with its sister venue, Number One Wine Bar. Within weeks of that, the owner of the apartment the couple had rented for 17 years called to say it had been sold.
'Tony and I were sitting on the sofa in that apartment one day saying 'What are we going to do now?',' Amanda says. 'Then the phone rang and it was your father.'
Dad heard Tony was in trouble and had a proposal: Why didn't he come over to La Perouse and help out as a consultant? When he heard about the eviction, he went one further. There were now three apartments above the restaurant: dad lived in one, my brother the other, and the middle one was empty. It was the Bilsons' if they wanted it.
Tony's menu tweaks earned mixed reviews. Personally, I loved the seafood boudin, but it didn't quite connect with a crowd who liked their seafood grilled with lemon and oil or, on cheat days, interred in a flood of molten mornay sauce.
'In some ways, Danny and Tony were diametrically opposed,' Amanda says. 'Tony could have six people in his restaurant and say he was going to give them the best experience they'd had in their lives. Danny was much more about delivering comfort food, bums on seats and turnover. But there was this special bond there, this mutual respect.'
Tony's years at Danny's coincided with the restaurant's last. Dad would sell in 2013 and head to Townsville to take over another seaside restaurant. Within months, that once-flailing place would be packed too. He remembers his final La Perouse years as good ones. A big part of that was the Bilsons' companionship. 'They were good neighbours and good friends,' he says.
Last January, a friend sent me a picture of a digital JCDecaux street advertisement in La Perouse. Next to a giant green can of Cooper's Pale Ale were the words: 'As local as missing Danny's Seafood.'
It inspired me to head to La Pa for the first time since I moved back to Sydney from the US. Walking towards the steps I'd once known so well, I felt a bit of the confusion Ivana must have felt arriving there 20 years ago. Abandoned now, the restaurant's concrete exterior was cracked in places and stained in others, with splotches of green moss and the occasional graffiti tag. Awnings bearing dad's name were spattered with grime. A couple of tables and chairs remained on the empty balcony, many overturned.
I sent a few photos to dad. He said he was sad to see what it had become, then quickly texted back with a bunch of ideas for how he'd bring it back to life.
He never stops, I thought to myself driving away home that day. But you'd be crazy to doubt him.