The scene at SPQR this afternoon, with the restaurant in liquidation and closed to patrons. Photo / Ella Wilks
One of Auckland’s most famous restaurants is closed to diners, with SPQR placed in liquidation.
In a just-released statement tonight, owner Chris Rupe said he was “really sorry for the current situation” and appreciated the support he’d received today.
“Thanks so much for your understanding, Aucklanders. I know you loyally share the love I’ve had for SPQR for the past 27 years. In the meantime, please spread your patronage around other locally-owned hospo businesses and show your support for the challenging but highly rewarding job they do.”
The Ponsonby Rd eatery has been an institution since opening in 1992, originally owned by cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and film-maker Dorthe Scheffmann.
The Herald can reveal liquidators were appointed to the business yesterday afternoon and it is no longer trading.
Co-liquidator Stephen Lawrence confirmed the liquidation. He described the Ponsonby Rd restaurant as “iconic” and said the industry as a whole was going through a tough time.
The hospitality sector was still feeling the impacts of the Covid pandemic and facing increased overheads and higher costs for supplies.
Given New Zealand was in the economic doldrums, people were spending less dining out.
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Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown said it was a “sad day”.
“Chapel also got into difficulties recently, it’s a tough market out there at present, construction failures and Smith & Caughey’s, so that’s why I’m putting pressure on council to control its costs.”
He was proud “to have the lowest rate rises in NZ”, although he’d have preferred no increase, Brown said.
“But I’m only one vote at council, I encourage Aucklanders to support their local food and drink premises.”
Today’s news about SPQR was devastating, Ponsonby Business Association general manager Viv Rosenberg said.
“It is an extremely sad day for Ponsonby and we are devastated. Our thoughts are with [owner] Chris [Rupe] and the team. Hopefully he will [be able to] work through it.”
Rupe was a member of the association and so it was now about “wrapping our arms around him”, Rosenberg said.
“Chris is part of the DNA of Ponsonby and we are heartbroken.”
She had spoken to Rupe since today’s news, but wouldn’t say what was said.
Restaurant Association of New Zealand chief executive Marisa Bidois said the liquidation was “heartbreaking” news.
“It’s tough times for our industry at the moment ... our businesses are facing increasing costs, and cost of living has hit our industry.”
Half of the 250 association members who responded to a survey this week about challenges they were facing had put customer downturn at number one, Bidois said.
“We will likely see others [in the same position as SPQR].”
Former hospitality veteran Luke Dallow told Newstalk ZB the pressure on restaurants and eateries “just comes down to escalating food and wage costs”.
”It’s so disheartening”, said Dallow, who owned various restaurants and bars over 30 years before selling up just before the Covid-19 pandemic.
He’s now a real estate agent.
“I feel sorry for [SPQR owner] Chris [Rupe] and the team because they work hard at what they do. There’s not one operator out there that does not welcome every customer through their front doors.
”It really just comes down to the escalating food and wage costs … we’re an island and we’ve got fish out there but the fish are so blimmin’ expensive. And the suffocating red tape out there for restaurants and bars - there’s a hurdle everywhere you go.”
SPQR is the latest in a series of Auckland landmark businesses falling prey to the weak economy.
Earlier this month, Chapel Bar & Bistro, also in Ponsonby, was placed in receivership after it failed to repay a loan to its co-owner worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In May, department store Smith & Caughey’s revealed plans to close in 2025 with the loss of almost 250 jobs.
SPQR owner Rupe previously spoke with Viva about the restaurant’s earliest days, including gay pride parades and celebrity encounters, while launching the SPQR Cook Book in 2014.
”The first [Hero Parade] was electric. It was the summer of 95 and Osh [Occupational Safety and Health] would have had a field day.
“People were sitting on balconies and hanging out of windows. Thousands of people crammed the pavements from one end of Ponsonby Rd to the other.
“The floats just kept coming, there were no rails up or anything like that. The music was loud, the crowd was loud and the outfits were especially loud. There was no shame. Everyone went all out.”
Famous diners at SPQR have included Mick Jagger and members of Duran Duran, Rupe told Viva.
”Mick Jagger came in once ... it was rather Hollywood, actually. He sat in the corner with his lady friend and they ordered a glass of wine each and a margarita pizza. It was the only time I’ve ever rung the media.
“He was the exception and a bloody good one, too. Jagger stuck around for an hour and, as he was leaving, a black SUV pulled up outside the entrance, wound down the window and managed to get a good pap shot. Shortly after, his car pulled up, he assumed the lotus position and they drove off.”
Duran Duran turned up with “a posse of girls”, Rupe said.
”Word went around town real quick. They sat in the corner by the ivy and stayed the whole night – all of them crammed around the table. Plenty of older googly-eyed women came in that night, just hoping for a peek.”
There were “so many” parties, Rupe said during the 2014 book launch.
”All dress-up, some with drag queens, guys wearing bowls of fruit on their head, that kind of stuff. The 90s, early 2000s were big for this, everyone dressed with anticipation.
“The parties were actually a way for us to say thank you to our friends and regulars, and all drinks were on the house 8 o’clock to midnight.”
Often he would wonder if the party should have been organised, before people began piling in just after 8pm.
”And then you could hardly move, everyone happily squashed in like sardines. Guests got wild, the bar top became a dancefloor and you never knew who went home with whom.”
Party themes included The Love Boat; the Stayers, Players, Queens and Regulars party; and New York Leatherette.
”Oh, and the cowboy one, that was good. The main battle was making sure our staff turned up to work the next day. It was a crazy period in SPQR’s history, the gay ol’ days, I guess.”
Taking over SPQR from its previous owners was hard, he told Viva.
”One minute it was happening, the next it wasn’t. The place was first owned by cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and then-partner Dorthe Scheffmann. Then Kelvin Gibson [long-time Prego owner] bought it, and Anthony Evans and I came along for the ride.
“I eventually bought the whole place with Paula Macks after Anthony died, in 1998, continuing what we had started.”
Former SPQR maitre d’ Krishna Botica, who started at the restaurant in 1997, told the Herald in 2022 that the business was famously in support of the city’s gay population.
“What SPQR managed to do for the gay community at that time in Auckland – it was quite radical. It was so important to have that place that the community could call home, and it’s still there.
“No other business in Auckland at that time was doing that, and it was amazing to be a part of it.”
Esther Lamb was headhunted out of a planned law career and into being a maitre d’ at SPQR aged 25 in 1993, soon after its opening.
SPQR was the first cafe/restaurant/bar of its kind and “reignited the whole Ponsonby dining scene”, she told the Herald in 2017.
”It was very rustic: thin pizzas and salad. And it was a step away from all that nouvelle cuisine and wine lists that went on forever. It was also a juncture between the arts and gay communities. You could go there and almost guarantee seeing three tables of people you knew – but that all happened very organically.
“The difference between the Dickensian law firm I’d been working at and the sheer joy and madness of that scene was intoxicating”, said Lamb, who went on to found now-closed Grey Lynn restaurant Siostra.
“We had so much fun. I did every shift in hot pants and high heels and Johnny [Caracciolo] was a peacock on the floor, strutting around and letting people dance on the bar ... it was crazy busy from the outset.
“It was also very gay. Buckwheat and Bertha came in one night in puffy gingham dresses and carrying a basket and threw a tablecloth on the bar and proceeded to have a picnic.”
SPQR was always full of celebrities “but nobody would know who they are now”, she said.
”[Late TV personality] Peter Sinclair used to sit up with his laptop and drink bottles of soave. [Former TV3 Nightline host] Belinda Todd was in there all the time.”
The “brutalist concept” for the restaurant’s interior was “cribbed together” with what was already there, Lamb said in the 2017 interview.
”Graeme Burgess was the architect and that original fit-out hasn’t been changed ... they cribbed it together with what they had in the space.”
Later the restaurant took over neighbouring Furniture for Flats and a motorbike garage on the right, she said.
”But everything’s stayed the same: the same chairs, the same light fittings, even the back room, which they could have extended the restaurant into or used to make the kitchen bigger. The only thing they changed, sadly, was paint out a beautiful collage in the women’s toilet.”
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