The Australia Long Weekend should celebrate everything that’s good about our diverse nation. 

Pellegrini’s Bar has been full of Australians looking for an authentic Italian connection for seven decades. This Melbourne icon was a marker for Australia’s change from an outpost of the British Empire to the multicultural country that we now love. The Pellegrini brothers who arrived as part of the wave of southern European migrants during the 1950s and 60s started the cafe in 1954 and introduced Mediterranean cuisine and coffee culture to Melbourne. 

The kitchen table is exactly that – a large communal table where you are in the thick of the preparation of traditional Italian fare. The minestrone never misses the mark. 

I have an intimate connection with Pellegrini’s. Following my birth in 1959, I was taken directly from the hospital in East Melbourne and spent the next three or four hours in a basket whilst my parents and their friends toasted my arrival to the world. In the late 1970s, I became acquainted with Sisto Malaspina when I introduced him to the sport of windsurfing at my windsurfer hire and tuition business in Sorrento. 

Imagine life in Australia without the Italian connection. No pizza, pasta and coffee – no dolce vita – unthinkable.