#41: Luigi Coluzzi
He's the champion Italian boxer who made Sydney wake up and smell the coffee. Fifty years on, Coluzzi's famous espresso still packs a punch
By Dan Rookwood
Luigi Coluzzi has had too much coffee and he's buzzing. It's only 11am and he's already on his fifth espresso.
"Normally [I have] only three," he says, basking in the winter sunshine at a table outside the iconic Darlinghurst café that bears his name. "I'm nearly 80 but I don't like doing nothing or watching television. I don't sleep, never sit down."
As if to prove his point, "Gigi" then springs to his feet, mid-sentence, to embrace an old friend who is shuffling down Victoria Street with his wife. On the way back, he buzzes around several other tables, pollinating each with pleasantries. He coochie-coos babies, kisses their mothers and remembers when their fathers were that age.
"Everybody come to see me," he says. "Everybody know me." Of course they do: he's the man who first introduced Sydney to proper coffee.
Although he's lived in Sydney for over 50 years, Luigi would be the first to admit (if only with a smile and an Italianate shrug worthy of The Sopranos' Paulie Walnuts) that his English isn't perfect. He gets by with a unique blend of ‘Italish' - half Italian, half English, all charm - delivered with an winning combination of infectious enthusiasm, wild hand gestures and visual props in the form of photographs with celebrities that are plastered all over the walls of Coluzzi cafés in Darlinghurst, Randwick and Sydney International Airport.
From Gough Whitlam to Clover Moore, the Fonz to Russell Crowe, Cadel Evans to Anthony Mundine, Bar Coluzzi is the confluence of influence where the great and the good and the bad and the ugly come to scheme over steaming coffee. "Bar Coluzzi is a meeting place," he says. "People come here their whole lives. Everything [else] changes but Coluzzi stays the same."
It has also become the centre of Sydney's cycling fraternity. The ‘Coluzzi bunch', a dawn chorus of 30 to 50 men in religion-revealing Lycra, meet at the café most mornings from 5.30am before their ride.
Coluzzi first arrived in Australia in 1954 with two key skills - as a boxer and as a barista - and he's made a living from both of them. Those hands - great, meaty fists that look like they belong to a man bigger than 5ft 8in - are the hands of the former middleweight champion of both Italy and Australia who boasted a mean left hook. They are also the hands of an espresso machine, trained on the job in Rome from the age of 12.
It was on his second visit to Sydney in 1955 that Luigi was first knocked out - by a young Romanian girl called Eleni, who would become his wife and mother to his three children. "It was Mum's idea to open the coffee lounge," says youngest daughter Paola, who now helps run the Randwick café. "Dad had fought a lot of fights, a lot of 12-rounders, and she wanted him to stop boxing. Mum is really the business brains behind the operation; Dad is the PR - and the coffee master, of course."
The skills have now been passed down the family. "I taught Paola, Elisabeth and Luigi Jr how to make coffee. I taught Luigi how to box, too. He was good, very big and strong. Tall and bald."
Bar Coluzzi first opened for business at the top of William Street in 1957, providing a taste of home for the thousands of Italians and other Europeans who arrived after WWII in a strange country that drank only beer, tea and "horrible" instant coffee. When in 1970 those premises had to be demolished to make way for the tunnel under the Coke sign, they moved around the corner to the now famous Bar Coluzzi that spills out on to Victoria Street.
There's no place like Rome, but Sydney comes pretty close. "Darlinghurst has changed a lot," he says. "The whole city has changed - it's beautiful, unbelievable. I wouldn't change for any [other] city now."
But it's not always been la dolce vita. Asked about the dark times, Luigi ducks and weaves and literally dances his way out of a corner like the noble boxer he once was. Conveniently, he spots another friend who needs to be warmly and loudly embraced.
He cannot talk about how his son was imprisoned for punching local sculptor Max Droga in 1999, a blow which almost took the artist's life. Gigi's mouth won't betray the story, but his eyes do, welling up momentarily.
The trial took its toll on the family, Luigi Snr in particular, and he regretfully retired and sold up that same year. But within a few months, the family started afresh with a new Bar Coluzzi on High Street in Randwick where Paola keeps the family name percolating.
Dad still helps out there most weekday mornings. But at the weekend, you'll see Signor Coluzzi back on Victoria Street - always dapper, always telling stories interspersed with snatches of opera. "Life is beautiful," he says.
Lifeline
1930 Born in Rome, Italy
1942 Schooled in coffee at busy Rome café
1954 Comes to Australia as middleweight champion of Italy
1956 Becomes middleweight champion of Australia
1957 Retires from boxing, opens first Bar Coluzzi on William St
1970 Relocates to Victoria St, Darlinghurst
2000 Opens Bar Coluzzi in Randwick
2007 Celebrates 50 years with gala party