PLACE REPRESENTED: Brisbane (specifically Mamma Luigi’s Restaurant), Queensland , Australia

ITEM: Small Wall ornament

NOTES: A restaurant as a sight? Sure, why not. It may not as well known as Delmonico’s, or Figlmüller, or L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele but Mamma Luigi’s is central to Brisbane’s culinary history. Australia was very Anglo-Celt and insular until after World War 2, Brisbane, the third biggest city, even more so. Brisbane never had the number of southern European migrants as Sydney or Melbourne. Despite this one of the few migrants that was here, Mamma Luigi (“Mama” Cesarina Deambrose with her husband Joe), decided that 1942 (when Australian’s were fighting Italians in North Africa) was the right time to open a Italian restaurant at a house (it wasn’t flash) at 240 St Paul’s Terrace in the inner-city suburb of Spring Hill. Perhaps there were enough Italian Americans in the US army based in Brisbane to give them the idea. Who knows? But, with that move Mamma Luigi’s Restaurant is regarded as the first restaurant in Brisbane to serve Italian food and, perhaps, the first foreign food restaurant in all of Brisbane. The restaurant became a hit with local Italians, Italians on holiday from the north (Italians had been farming in the north of the state since the 1920s), adventurous Australians and celebrities: General Douglas MacArthur and singer Nat King Cole ate there, and former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was a regular. It was, perhaps the most well known and dominant Italian restaurant in Brisbane until the Italian Club in Newmarket went upscale in the 1970s. Many Italian restaurants followed. Every Brisbanite of a certain generation remembers Mamma Luigi’s and everyone’s parents ate there as did mine (Italian speaking Croatians). Mama Luigi’s restaurant closed in the 1980s. The restaurant eventually changed hands and the property was sold in 2003 and restored by the new owner. It sold in 2017 to Berson Properties who applied to demolish the house but after public outcry Hutchinson Builders were involved in the buildings relocation to Toowong as a suburban house and where it remains today.

This souvenir may have started off as a advertising promotional tool but it becomes a travel souvenir. The colours pop, and all the information you would now see on a website (well, a lot of it) is contained on the dish.

YEAR (APPROXIMATE): 1970s

MADE FROM: China

MADE IN: Australia

MANUFACTURER: Westminster

DIMENSIONS: 10cm diameter

The restaurant at Spring Hill, 1960s 

Mamma Cesarina and husband Joe

The building in Spring Hill, 2000s

The Vacant lot , Spring Hill circa 2024

The new home for the building in Toowong, circa 2024