{"id":530,"date":"2026-04-28T18:52:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/530\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T18:52:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:52:50","slug":"melbourne-eating-institution-marios-celebrates-40th-anniversary-with-free-publication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/530\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne eating institution Marios celebrates 40th anniversary with free publication"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the late 1990s, Melbourne institution Marios caused a firestorm when it denied comedian Jerry Seinfeld team’s entreaties to secure a table for breakfast.<\/p>\n

After all, there was a strict no-booking policy in place, which remains today, 40 years after the Fitzroy cafe first opened its doors.<\/p>\n

However, that has not stopped many thousands of everyday diners \u2014 and celebrities from Kylie Minogue, to Ryan Gosling and Heath Ledger \u2014 filling the Fitzroy cafe’s sought-after tables to enjoy brekkie, a coffee, a glass of wine or some classic Italian fare.<\/p>\n

\"Kylie<\/p>\n

Many high-profile people, including Kylie Minogue, have visited Marios over the decades. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Today, Marios will celebrate its 40th by giving diners a free magazine-style publication celebrating its history, with contributions from an array of famous fans including Colin Hay, Sam Pang, Red Symons and Mary Coustas, each naming their favourite dish.<\/p>\n

‘Headquarters for alternative Melbourne’<\/p>\n

Mario Maccarone says when he and Mario De Pasquale opened the cafe \u2014 and catering business out the back \u2014 in the city’s now-iconic Brunswick Street, it was a very rundown area with cheap rent.<\/p>\n

“Brunswick Street was mostly boarded-up shops with students or artists living in the shopfronts or having studios in the shopfronts, or rehearsal rooms for bands,” says Maccarone.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Mario Maccarone (right) and Mario De Pasquale outside the cafe in more recent times. (Supplied: Helga Salwe)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Or, as he also puts it, “the headquarters for alternative Melbourne”.<\/p>\n

He says it was a fantastic place to be, with PBS and Triple R community radio stations in the area, the Universal Theatre on Victoria Street, and the Last Laugh in Collingwood.<\/p>\n

“And we were welcoming of all kinds of minorities, so we were embraced by everyone.”<\/p>\n

In the early days, all sorts of creative deals were cut by agents, promoters and managers using the cafe’s one public payphone.<\/p>\n

A hit from the start<\/p>\n

Maccarone and De Pasquale, who’d met as waiters at Melbourne restaurant Tsindos, got the keys to the cafe, now a Melbourne institution, on Maccarone’s 24th birthday.<\/p>\n

De Pasquale, the senior of the pair by about eight years, had started his own catering business, which was taking off.<\/p>\n

Maccarone, who helped him as a waiter, said they opened the cafe at the front almost as a bit of an afterthought \u2014 “and of course what happened was the cafe went crazy straight away”.<\/p>\n

In the early days, De Pasquale, a qualified cook, ran the kitchen while the younger Mario waited tables.<\/p>\n

“But as time went by, it just made sense to have two Marios out the front,” says Maccarone.<\/p>\n

“That meant we could cover more hours, and there was always a Mario in the building.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A Marios float during a popular waiters’ race event on Brunswick Street. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Maccarone says they wanted to provide an honest “eating house” that was a bistro, restaurant and cafe all rolled into one. But along with wholesome Italian fare, it also had a bit of flair about it.<\/p>\n

There were proper tablecloths, and “waiters that looked like waiters”, which he says was something of anomaly in 1980s Fitzroy.<\/p>\n

However not everything was as slick as it could be; in the first year, the cafe only had one toilet, which diners could only access by walking through the kitchen.<\/p>\n

Filling a gap in Melbourne’s hospitality scene<\/p>\n

Maccarone says he and De Pasquale had a feeling there were two main things missing in Melbourne hospitality.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An early menu from 1987, featuring the cafe’s popular all-day breakfast. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

One was all-day breakfast, in a time when even finding somewhere to go out for breakfast was tricky.<\/p>\n

“If there were some breakfast places, they’d stopped serving breakfast at 10 in the morning, and most of our audience hasn’t even gotten out of bed at that stage,” he says.<\/p>\n

“A lot of the artists and musicians in the area just love the fact they could come at one o’clock, two o’clock or three o’clock in the afternoon and have breakfast.”<\/p>\n

They also decided early on that as long as the doors were open, the kitchen wouldn’t close. So at, say 5pm, you could have breakfast, lunch or dinner.<\/p>\n

Loyal staff, customers stay for the long haul<\/p>\n

Customer Timothy has been dining at Marios since he was a uni student in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

These days he still goes about three times each week, often with his wife and four kids, and likes the fact many of the staff have been around for years.<\/p>\n

“Once you start going to a place for a long time, you get a family feel,” he says.<\/p>\n

\"Marios<\/p>\n

Marios staff member Dan Barron out front at the Melbourne institution. (Supplied: Julian Kingma)<\/p>\n

“Now my [older] daughter, who turned 18 just recently, she comes here with her girlfriends. It’s intergenerational.”<\/p>\n

The Fitzroy North resident pinpoints the garlic bread, and the spaghetti bolognese as his hot favourites, and plans to join today’s 40th celebrations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even if Marios isn’t offering day one menu prices, like it did for its 30th anniversary.<\/p>\n

“Fifty-cent coffees, and $1.50 pastas … they should do that every day,” Timothy laughs.<\/p>\n

One retirement down, no plans for a second<\/p>\n

About five years ago, the older Mario retired, but not before staying longer than intended to help their business survive the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The two Marios pictured at work in the early 1990s. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

During that time, the cafe also sold groceries and sent its waiters, waistcoats and all, to deliver meals to people’s front doors, says Maccarone.<\/p>\n

Along the way, Marios has also continued its popular tradition of hosting a different art exhibition every three weeks.<\/p>\n

Maccarone, whose daughter Milla now also works part-time at the cafe, has no plans to retire anytime soon, still thriving on the interactions he has with customers.<\/p>\n

“I still love it. The place is successful, people love it \u2014 they tell me constantly,” he says.<\/p>\n

“So it’s pretty easy to be proud of it, and pretty easy to enjoy it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the late 1990s, Melbourne institution Marios caused a firestorm when it denied comedian Jerry Seinfeld team’s entreaties…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1190,1193,1194,1189,1191,1192,1188,260],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-anniversary","tag-brusswick-street","tag-cafe","tag-fitzroy","tag-james-maccarone","tag-mario-de-pasquale","tag-marios","tag-melbourne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}