First published in The Age on November 11, 1986

Flavour of Rome preserved

My favourite time of the day to go to Pellegrini’s is after the dinner hour when most of the push has gone, leaving the staff table in the kitchen at the back, fairly free. Then, you might hear a snatch of Italian opera or a proper argument carried out in the lingo and life in Melbourne takes on a more passionate shade. When I got to Rome and heard street noises and the songs, I couldn’t believe how like Pellegrini’s it was.

It even smelled the same; of rich, dark coffee and of Bolognaise sauce. My smell-memory of the skinny restaurant at the top of Bourke Street was imprinted very early for I suspect I was first taken there in a bib.

It was just the same then as is now, which is why I like it so much and why, each time I go away from Melbourne and come back again, I invariably gravitate to Pelle’s for reassurance that though Mr Grollo is changing everything around here, some things stay the same.

My white-haired father tells me he used to dine there as a young man keeping odd hours. He says that the Pellegrini brothers would let him prop for his midnight minestrone on the fridge in the kitchen.

When he started taking us there, those same smiling Pellegrinis excused us the appalling gaffe of eating spaghetti “white” – with butter rather than the rich red sauces. Thank God that phase passed; and thank God we grew out of the passion for strawberry granitas which are still so sweet and thick with ice that a straw stands straight up in the glass. Imagine the kilojoule count!

The menu gives me as much the spirit of place as the décor and the familial faces of the staff do. Emma has been making the pasta for 24 years and I’m sure that not one new dish has been added to the menu in all that time. Any lack of invention is forgiven, however, for the lasagne is the best in town and I still dream about the Russian salad, really potato salad cunningly disguised by the Imperial pink of beetroot pieces. Also, you get what you want so fast – almost instantly.

The waiter dispensing cappuccino behind the bubbling Gaggia will take your order, yell it into an old intercom box connected to the one-stove kitchen and, in a twinkle, it comes steaming up the counter with bread, knife, fork and serviette. You have to fight for the pepper and salt yourself.

Pellegrini’s it must be remembered is one establishment geographically divided into two distinct premises. The part down the lane at the back is an expanded restaurant with tables and chairs. The smorgasbord spread and the spaghetti is cooked there in the biggest pots you have ever seen.

The part at the front, the so-called Espresso bar, is the place I’m talking about, and quite remarkably it relies on the ingenuity of one person working in front of one household-sized stove. I once lived in a house with the same stove and it astounds me how Pellegrini’s manages to feed so many people so efficiently. The gas flames go all day and night so the kitchen is always warm.

The familiarity, the speed, and the generous servings probably account for Pellegrini’s popularity. It is comfortable rather than pretentious. On cold winter lunchtimes when the rain blows horizontally along Bourke Street, the front windows fog up and you cannot get a seat. Should you try, there is a risk of mortal injury as steaming food and coffees are passed across the heads of diners and people queueing three deep for a seat.

Dinner time is usually easier but the crush will build up again when the theatres around the top end spill their patrons out into the night. Then there is the clattering and the yelling about who ordered the five strudels and whether this orange juice is for you, or the guy up the other end of the counter – the one spying surreptitiously in the mirrors that line all the walls and make old Pelle’s look even busier that it can be at full tilt. I’ve spotted most of my friends at some time or other.

You can very comfortable eat alone and nobody worries if you’re reading Tolstoy, the ‘Tribune’ or your thesis. The only persistent conversationalists will be the tourists, new to Melbourne, or some of the real characters like the Irish priest who lived at Lourdes and explained the healing miracle to pilgrims. Forgive me father but I was curious. “Not at all,” he said, and paid for my coffee. Barry Jones did the same, one other day.

I am loyal to everything about Pellegrini’s, even now that it is run by the Nino Pangrazio-Sisto Malaspina partnership and that these days the fringe playwrights of Fitzroy stick their posters in layers all over the doors. I don’t mind any of that but I’ve always worried about one aspect. Why do they still serve cappuccino in glasses? I mean I’ve never managed to grow asbestos skin on my fingers but I’ve never managed the glass without first wrapping a serviette around it. It’s daggy I know, but I really hate cold coffee.