His face was that familiar, his presence in so many lives that real

“Let’s go get coffee at Pellegrini’s” is about as Melbourne a thing to say as “Meet you under the clocks at Flinders Street” – maybe more so if you had fallen under the cultural sway of the Italian immigrants who helped make Melbourne’s urban fabric more urban-seeming in the…

• Matt Holden
• The Age

There was a time not so long ago when there weren’t that many places to go for a coffee in the CBD, especially outside the nine-to-five.

But there was always Pellegrini’s, nestled on the corner of Bourke and Crossley streets, a little slice of 1950s Italy on Melbourne’s main drag.

Since 1954 Pellegrini’s…

• His face was…