Australian Dictionary of Biography

Dante Triaca (1916–1996) and David Joseph Triaca (1922–1996), restaurateurs, were brothers who continued a hospitality dynasty started by their father. Dante was born on 20 February 1916 at Lucignana, Tuscany, Italy, eldest of three children of Camillo Triaca, sculptor and restaurateur, and his wife Brasilina, née Damiani. Their sister Elide was born in 1920 and David on 16 February 1922, both in Lucignana. Camillo had migrated to Melbourne in 1909, but went back to Italy in 1914 to serve in World War I. He returned to Australia in 1923 and his family followed in 1926. By 1930 he had acquired the lease to the Café Latin at 206 Exhibition Street, Melbourne. With its home-style Italian food and clubby, bohemian atmosphere, it quickly became a favoured haunt of ‘dining-out intellectuals’ (Smith’s Weekly 1949, 8). It was later immortalised by the writer Hal Porter, who recalled it as a place where the young man ‘can buy—Life—for half a crown’ (1963, 217).

Both Dante and David worked at the Café Latin from a young age. Dante was educated at Christian Brothers (Parade) College, East Melbourne, but his father pulled him out of school at fourteen to work in the kitchen. David attended both Parade and St Kevin’s College, Toorak. At the age of seventeen, he was sent by his father to learn the trade at the Hotel Australia on Collins Street, before returning to work with his father. Camillo also owned a plaster figurine business; the young men worked at the plaster factory during the day and at the Latin at night.

During World War II the Triaca brothers served short stints in the Citizen Military Forces. Dante enlisted on 22 August 1940 and David on 6 October 1941, but each was discharged after a few months due to their reserved occupation. A review of the Café Latin in 1949 reported that the proprietor was ‘assisted by tall, dark sons Dante and David’ (Smith’s Weekly 1949, 8). The next year the brothers took over management. Soon after Dante opened Number 1 Swanston Street, a dining room inside Melbourne’s iconic Young and Jackson’s Hotel. It was not as club-like as the Latin, though it had excellent food and wine and plenty of atmosphere and attracted a similar clientele. Dante ran Number 1 Swanston Street until 1964.

The Café Latin closed in 1955 after the premises it occupied were bought by the Vigano family, owners of Mario’s restaurant next door. In 1957 David moved on to managing the Royal Artillery Hotel on Elizabeth Street, until 1962 when he bought the Café Venezia at 55 Lonsdale Street. There he opened a new iteration of Café Latin, which was christened the ‘new’ Latin and described as ‘the Kingdom of David’ (Herald-Sun 1996, 88). It carried on in the same tradition, attracting not just the local artistic and professional classes but overseas visitors including the future pope Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and the actor Richard Burton. It was later described as ‘the most significant restaurant in Melbourne’ (Downes 1992, 28).

In 1967 the Triacas purchased Mario’s Hotel, the site of the original Café Latin, where Dante managed Triaca’s Bubble’n’Squeak, a theatre restaurant which attracted popular performers, but it closed after about 18 months. Dante then ran the family’s plaster ornaments factory until the 1970s. Battling ill health, David reluctantly sold the Latin in 1984 to the chef Bill Marchetti and his wife Cheryl, who saw themselves as caretakers of the restaurant’s legacy.

Like Camillo before them, Dante and David were consummate and charming hosts who welcomed guests warmly and were ever attentive to their needs. ‘Suave and handsome’ (Hutton 1950, 2), Dante had a ‘very courteous manner, and yet a slightly devilish sense of humour’ (Nolan 1996, 19). David was noted for his grace and kindness, and for caring deeply about the correct partnering of food and wine. He claimed credit for introducing the Portuguese wine Mateus Rosé to Melbourne.

While they had a tremendous work ethic, the Triaca brothers had passions outside of the restaurant. David loved horses and raced a few and was a dedicated fan of Hawthorn Football Club. Dante was a talented fisherman, and both were keen operagoers. They were also family oriented and both brothers married women of Italian heritage. On 23 June 1945 at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Hawthorn, Dante married Victorian-born Gina Tilbury, daughter of Italian-born Amelia Bianca Tilbury, née Musso. They had two children: Adrian (b. 1946), who became a lawyer, and Maria (b. 1949), whose 1985 biography of her grandmother Amelia was critically well received. On 2 July 1952 at St Patrick’s Cathedral, David married Maria Josephine Santospirito, the daughter of the Italian community leader Louisa Angelina (Lena) Santospirito, née Virgona. Their daughter Pia was born in 1962 and became a horse trainer. Dante’s daughter Maria recalled Sunday as a day when her family would follow morning mass with Sunday lunch at Nonno Camillo’s house.

The Triacas were an important part of a group of close-knit Italian families that came to be known as the ‘Spaghetti Mafia’ for their role in popularising Italian food in Melbourne. Photos later in life reveal the brothers had kind faces, smiling countenances, and well-defined eyebrows in common. At six feet two inches (188 cm), David was taller than Dante and was described as a ‘big, bulky man’ (Latreille 1979, 17), who was still able to move nimbly. Dante was ‘a very elegant sort of person with a clipped European accent’ (Nolan 1996, 19).

Despite his health issues, in 1986 David bought Agostino Pizza Restaurant in Kew. In 1994, with Dante’s son Adrian, he opened Triaca’s restaurant in Hawthorn. His loyal Latin customers followed him. Both the Triaca brothers died in 1996. Dante had a heart attack in his sleep on 15 January at Hawthorn, while David succumbed to pancreatic cancer on 28 September at the Mercy Hospital, East Melbourne. They were buried with Catholic rites in Springvale cemetery. A portrait of David by Clifton Pugh hung first at the Latin and then at Triaca’s in Hawthorn.