Pellegrini’s is a Melbourne institution. This is a love letter to the immigrants who made it

At the top end of Bourke Street in Melbourne’s CBD, Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar might remind you of the Boston bar where Sam, Woody, Coach, Carla and Diane dispensed drinks, advice and comfort to city workers in the sitcom Cheers.

A place where everyone knows your name, with a steady stream of colourful characters both behind the bar and at the counter, and the noise of the modern world is hushed with a restorative coffee, a sweet pastry and welcoming smile. If you were going to make a Cheers-like sitcom set in Australia today, Pellegrini’s would be the setting.

Pellegrini’s: A Melbourne Legacy isn’t a sitcom, but it’s filled with a similar mix of comedy, warmth, nostalgia and sentimentality. It’s a sweet, succinct documentary portrait of the Melbourne institution by producer Rob Gabriel and writer-director Frank Lotito, a pair of bona fide regulars.

It’s a love letter to post-World War II Italian immigrants and their offspring, the city’s unique coffee culture and, perhaps most poignantly, an epitaph to Sisto Malaspina, Pellegrini’s co-owner who was killed in a knife attack in 2018 only a few hundred metres away.

Balancing celebration with tragedy is no easy task, which makes Pellegrini’s something of a story told in two parts. In the first – and with the help of fabulous archival footage and photos – we learn how brothers Leo and Vildo Pellegrini, recently arrived from Italy, opened a coffee bar in 1954, a few doors from the still-running Florentino restaurant where they both worked.

Not just any old brew, but the true espresso from the old country made with what is believed to be one of the first imported Gaggia coffee machines.

“Short, strong and uncompromising coffee,” as the voiceover tells us. The menu, which has barely changed in the decades since, included humble home-cooked pastas, lasagne that “could fix a broken heart”, cakes and the legendary granita.

In 1974, it was taken over by Nino Pangrazio and Sisto. Following Sisto’s death and the hospitality trade wrecking-ball of the COVID pandemic, Pangrazio sold his share of the business to Sisto’s widow and son, who now manages the cafe.

They are all interviewed here, along with a handful of long-standing staff who are immediately recognisable to even an occasional visitor.

In this way, the documentary paints Pellegrini’s as a place ruled by ancestry and cultural traditions rather than food trends or the ever-changing fads of the hospitality trade.

It’s a triumphant origin story of today’s food scene as well as post-war immigration, although it assiduously avoids straying into the ugly politics that surrounds today’s debates around that topic.

Apart from a brief excerpt from a newsreader, Sisto’s tragic end isn’t shown. Instead, it’s recounted by those who knew him. That includes a moving anecdote of that awful day, but there is nothing maudlin in this tribute.

Despite its compact running time, the film could have covered more than it does and in a more inventive and dynamic way. For starters, a more emotive voiceover might have helped.

But it’s a worthy addition to a line-up of heartfelt and personal homegrown documentaries on SBS — see also The Lost City of Melbourne, Australia’s Greek Cafes & Milkbars and Ange & The Boss: Puskas in Australia. Together, they are threads in a tapestry that weave a picture of the nation’s unique, diverse and quirky history.

Pellegrini’s: A Melbourne Legacy airs 8.30pm Sunday, September 27 on SBS Food and SBS On Demand.

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