Marios and the Marios

February 1997

Marios cafe started ten years ago in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy as the "front" for another business.

Mario DePasquale had a catering business which had outgrown his home kitchen and he and his friend and business partner, Mario Maccarone, went looking for a commercial kitchen.

They looked at some factories and warehouse space before choosing a small "deli, lunch time, sandwich place" in Brunswick Street. It was in April 1986 that the Marios (Mario DePasquale, known as Mario DeP; Mario Maccarone, known as Mario M) took over Acopalypso.

"We got the keys on the 25th which was Anzac Day and opened on the following Monday which was my birthday," explained Mario Maccarone. The Marios reminisced about spending $22 in doing it up - "no, no," said Mario DeP, "it was at least $122 - we bought a can of paint and some light globes and then moved Mario's house into it."

"Most of the furniture was from my living room," said MM.

Success came quickly, Brunswick Street embraced the new business which has now become a symbol of its cafe culture.

"What we did then, which was really important for the people who lived there", explained Mario DeP, "was to serve breakfast all day, every day and at night. When we opened there were very few places in Melbourne where you could get a meal at 4pm in the afternoon."

"Our theory with the cafe was that you are not allowed to be closed" explains MM "People shouldn't have to think -- 'are they open?'

The Marios philosophy is 'accessibility'. Mario DeP explains - "when we first started, we wanted to make food accessible. It had to unbelievably cheap, but it's not just about price, quality was important." MM takes up the story, "for someone my age at the time, there was only a couple of places where you could have a meal, a no fuss meal, a meal where you could pop in, have a bowl of pasta, 20 minutes and you're gone again.

We just felt that we could lift the ante, that we could put up something better ... service was imperative, the service had to be the first and most important thing, or, equally as important as the produce. We steered right away from seafood and the more expensive produce. We didn't have any fresh fish on (the menu) for the first year and then we would only do it on a Friday. Obviously it has grown from that."

Not only has the menu grown at Marios but so has the Marios' reach over Melbourne. Now, with the hugely successful food and entertainment venue, The Continental, in Greville Street Prahran, they are a major influence on the Melbourne music scene. The Continental started at the beginning of 1992 with the downstairs cafe. It was not until June 1993 and a huge amount of work and planning to get everything the way they wanted it that the upstairs room opened. The level of the floors, the sound system, the huge bar, the state of the art lighting rigs, make this the music industry's most sought after room. It's a big operation, over 400 people between the two rooms.

Staff, as always, are hugely important and the Marios pride themselves on their staff loyalty. In any operation it is the staff who are the facilitators or, sometimes unfortunately, the barrier between what the owner/chef wants the customers to get and what they actually receive. This is something the Marios are very conscious of, service has always been a priority for them. I like to think that they developed some understanding of this from their work at Mietta's, Fitzroy. Certainly there are strong memories of those times which we enjoyed reliving with them and with Bernard Galbally the manager from the beginning of The Continental.

Bernard Galbally was the youngest and the tallest of the trainee waiters at Mietta's in the early 80's, and was never allowed to work with his best friend, the more mature, shorter and more experienced Mario Maccarone. Our maitre'd at that time and the disciplinarian of the young Bernard Galbally was Henri Schorg. Henri came from a classic European waiter's training and boys on the floor did not talk to each other. So Bernard was sent to one room and Mario to another at Mietta's Fitzroy and later on were even dispatched from one restaurant to another - in 1984 when we started Mietta's, Alfred Place.

It all seems a long time ago and it was even longer ago that the other Mario (DePasquale) worked with us in Brunswick Street. I can remember him standing in the old passage way from the butcher's shop dining room looking through into the kitchen. The kitchen was always his first love, even in the days when he worked for Raymond Tsindos at the Tsindos Bistro in Bourke Street.

"I was primarily a waiter, working one day a week in the kitchen. I was a frustrated cook but the money was better as a waiter. They were the good old days when tips were really good, the tips were phenomenal. Waiters here (at The Continental) would be thrilled to get half that amount now. It was huge then."

But that was a long time ago in many ways, and huge changes have taken place in the dining out culture. As M DeP recalls, "fifteen years ago there was no cafe culture by comparison, different people were going out. The nature of the clientele was very upmarket."

With Marios a whole new group started going out, and, at a very different cost structure. As well as the price making food accessible at Marios, Mario DeP also believes that it was very important that in the early days there was strictly no alcohol. Marios did not have a license nor a BYO permit. This meant that tables could be turned over easily. The other thing Mario DeP recalls was that for the first four or five years they used to close at 5pm on Saturday nights and give all the staff the night off. Certainly good for staff morale and staff loyalty. Head waiter, Massimo Di Sora, was the first person employed at Marios and for many regulars is Marios. As well as waiting on tables and supervising the running of the cafe, Massimo is an artist and designed the 10th anniversary exhibition which was hanging on the cafe walls over Autumn (some of it can still be seen at The Continental) . It included pictures and memorabilia -- first menus, letters of complaint, and some brilliant collages and imagery of the Marios over the years. The other 'artist in residence' is waiter, Andrew Philipp, whose delicate models of the Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State and Chrysler buildings sit casually acquiring dust (too delicate to clean) in odd corners of the cafe - one stuck in a corner and another on the top of the bar.

After a few years, the strict no booze rule at Marios was removed and in January 1990 the boys got a licence, but still no BYO allowed and to this very day, no credit cards. I wondered if people complained. MM "lately we've had a few people getting upset. But with bills averaging perhaps $12, it seems a fair thing".

The simple shopfront is little changed over the ten years. There are no flash decorations, no gimmicks. If you were a foreigner to Melbourne and didn't know about Marios; if there weren't the row of customers heads in the window and tables sitting outside, which there always are, at all times of the day; if you don't drink coffee -- then you could walk right past the former sandwich shop.

It is the essence of simplicity in style. But the coffee is always good and so is the food. The Marios have never wanted to change or alter the formula of its success, never wanted to expand. Mario DeP explains "we kind of thought that it was a beautiful thing and it was best not to touch it, and I certainly to this day, don't regret that. As soon as you start to add another six or eight tables, it becomes a different place, the kitchen doesn't cope and the whole feeling changes. We always felt, we're onto something good here." Most of Melbourne would agree.

The one addition they have made in celebration of their decade in business lies at the entrance, walked over and probably unnoticed by thousands of coffee drinkers. It is very much in the spirit of the Marios business, a classic signature set in mosaic as you step through the door. It took some time to find the Italian craftsmen who still do this work and to make sure that it's right. How many people see it? Who cares, the Marios know that it is there, it belongs to them and it is right.

Se Cam Smith on the rise of the Chic Italian bistro