At Mamma Maria's above the old El Rocco jazz cellar, Gino Bigazzi is paying his staff from great wads of money stuffed in his back pocket. 'The young people here are old already,' he says. 'Everything is getting out of proportion'

Rennie Ellis and Wesley Stacey Kings Cross Sydney: A personal look at the Cross 1971 pg 66

At Mamma Maria’s a three-floor complex of Italian fooderies which includes a cellar cabaret, a pizzeria, a cocktail bar, a take-away food bar, bistro and balcony restaurant, you can have an excellent night out for two, wine included, for between five and six dollars. In the busy, busy bistro with its flickering candles in Chianti bottles and red tablecloths Gino Bigazzi the boss waits on tables like any one of his staff. Mamma Maria’s started as a tiny restaurant called Ginos. ‘I changed the name,’ says the boss, ‘because my mother died. But to me Mamma Maria means more or less a mother for everyone, not just my mother’.