Seven weeks after a patron inadvertently brought COVID-19 into the restaurant, Ms Frankie is finally reopening for takeaway this weekend.
Co-owner of the Cremorne venue Wani Sakellaropoulos said it had been a "really, really tough time".
"We're excited to get some oil back in the motor. I can't wait to get the chefs in," she told ABC Radio Melbourne Mornings.
As Ms Sakellaropoulos puts it, "the bomb went off" at Ms Frankie in July when an infected man attended the restaurant on Tuesday, July 13.
"He was in attendance with a big, big table that night. Unbeknownst to him, he had COVID."
During his hour-and-a-half sitting, the Delta variant spread like wildfire among both staff and patrons.
The restaurant found out two days later, on a Thursday night before the city entered another lockdown.
When Ms Frankie got the call from the Victorian Health Department telling them they were an exposure site they had a full house.
"I was told Tuesday there was a guest he was positive. Get everyone home safe, test. If you don't return a positive still stay home for 14 days, get a COVID clean, you'll be right," she said.
They gradually and safely shut down the restaurant that night, unaware the virus was circulating at that very moment.
"I don't think the messaging was strong enough to us," Ms Sakellaropoulos said.
'Long road' back to health
All up 10 staff at Ms Frankie were infected, including their chef who ended up in hospital in intensive care on a ventilator.
"It was a very scary, dark, sad place for the family," Ms Sakellaropoulos.
In his mid-50s, the chef had been accustomed to working long days standing up in a kitchen.
While every day he reports feeling better, the disease is still impacting his health.
"His wife kind of follows him around with a chair and gets him to sort of sit [down] every 15 or so minutes, because he actually can't stand up for too long before his breath is taken away," she said.
Other employees also say they are still affected by the virus.
"All our staff are getting behind the vaccine because we know what it means when you don't have it," she said.
Behind every COVID number is a person
In the days and weeks after the exposure, one piece of bad news followed another for the restaurant.
Friends, family members and colleagues were testing positive for the virus, and some of them were becoming seriously ill.
In the daily press conferences and in media reports each of these people was reported as a number.
For those directly impacted it was hard to watch.
"It got to a point where I just said, 'I can't watch my beautiful restaurant… [put] up in those kinds of lights'. It was really difficult for me."
Community support 'a beacon of light'
In the wake of the Ms Frankie cluster, the restaurant was praised for its diligence in enforcing COVID protocols including getting customers to check-in.
After COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar publicly and privately praised the restaurant they started receiving messages from people thanking them for being "COVID warriors".
"It was just this barrage of beautiful, confident, loving words to get us through," she said.
"We do have a really high-quality restaurant and people do love what we do."
