Vanuatu Daily Post Online News Service - appeal to save the Rossi Restaurant

Appeal to 'Save The Rossi' launched

By Marc Neil-Jones

December 3 2005

The Rossi Restaurant is being forced to close down its doors and find alternative employment for 50 staff only 12 days before Christmas following the demands by the foreign investors who want to put the property up for sale. The Rossi is one of Port Vila's most popular spots for tourists and locals and a historical meeting point in the colonial New Hebrides condominium government where the English and French plantation owners used to ride up on horseback to attend dances and parties there. The name Rossi originated when the old wooden and iron roofed building on the water was taken over by Antoine Rossi and Aggie Reid well before the war. Aggie Reid had a reputation as one of the best cooks in the Pacific accordingto historian Reece Discombe. "During the war the British were warning the women to get out and go to Australia and so she went to Australia and the Rossi was managed by other people including Bernard Rolland's father." In the 70's Rossi sold out toa Colonel who in turn sold to the present owners the Mckendrick's family. During the rioting at Independence the British and French only could get together for illegal drinking sessions in a closed room at The Rossi Hotel. Discombe advised, "It will be very sad if yet another historical site is pulled down. It should be preserved. Although a lot of the building is new and the old bar was near where the insurance building is now, many people used to come to the Rossi to meet each other and visitingships and boats. There was a large verandah that people used to dance on. Before the sea wall was built in the 70's using land fill from the harbour which they paid the boys cartons of beer to fill up the truck and take it around, the water came up inside where the restaurant is now." He said, "We have virtually no historical buildings left any more and I would be disappointed to see the Rossi knocked down and developed." Roy Ernst, the restaurant owner who has been forced out by the owners advised, "Do we really want to see another historical icon torn down? The Rossi was the original meeting place in the New Hebrides and is a popular meeting place now. It is a pleasant spot to dine and look out over the harbour. There are hardly any space on the water left in Vila and we are appealing to the government to preserve the building as a historical monument. We are setting up a book for people to sign to 'Save the Rossi' and stop foreign developers who have no interest in our history bulldozing it to make way for luxury flats or high rises." Ernst has built the restaurant up since 1988 into a successful business and is working hard to pay staff out and find alternative employment for them whilst at the same time looking for alternative premises to operate from. On 12 December everything will be removed from the Rossi and the shutters pulled down. It will be the end of an era and the end of one of Vila's most famous restaurants that has been mentioned in numerous magazine articles and books.