Garlic bread? It was the future for Mario

SUPER Mario . . . quite possibly the best-known man in Oldham

Martyn meets...MARIO ANDREOTTI, Oldham’s Italian restaurateur
CHATTING in the 19th Hole bar at Saddleworth Golf Club a couple of weeks back, one of the guys posed this intriguing question:

‘Who is the currently the most famous man in Oldham?’

A few names were bandied about and the consensus eventually arrived at the old guy who wanders around the highways and byways of the borough, usually found in central reservations and, to be honest, rummaging in bins while wearing camouflage gear. Yeah, you know who I mean . . .

My suggestion was certainly less contentious — and “famous” is probably the wrong word; but I reckon this guy is one of the best-known people in Oldham by some distance.

Mario Andreotti. Next year this Italian restaurateur will be celebrating 30 years in his Yorkshire Street trattoria and pizzeria.

He must have served food to just about everyone who eats out in this lovely old town of ours. I can remember eating my first ever “foreign” meal in the early 80s in the company of friends from Uppermill.

Chomping garlic bread and a pizza was an enormous culinary challenge for a lad weaned on roast beef dinners and rag puddings, always with chips.

Mario, whose eyes twinkle in the way that only Latins can achieve when he deflects questions about his age, must have influenced the culinary habits of a literally thousands, if not more, Oldhamers than you can shake a bread stick at.

Everyone knows Mario, but does any really know this adopted Oldhamer, who hails from farming stock close to the glorious northern Italian city that is Venice?

I thought I did, until I spent time in his office above the restaurant chatting about his globetrotting, almost gypsyesque life.

A life tinged with tragedies which have shaped his outlook but not dimmed his eternal optimism and his love of, well, the good life.

The story of this second youngest of five children goes back to his days in the Como region close to Italy’s industrial heartland of Milan, to where the family relocated to try and find work.

Mario was successful, helping out at the local Lever Bros factory (in Italy the brand was Enco) doing anything that was asked of him, sweeping, cleaning and generally helping out. He had good experience of the job for he had earlier worked in the factory of local upholsterer when he was just 10 and a half — and a half is always important when you’re that age — before his farmer father upped sticks and moved the family away from the Venetian Riviera. But the area was destined to play a huge role in his later, adult life.

At 15 the wanderlust kicked in and Mario was off to Switzerland finding work in the catering industry and his career was launched.

He didn’t exactly tell his father where he was going, but “my father knew where I was” he recalls, adding: “I worked all over Europe, always in the catering business —I have an A-Z of places I stayed and worked. Very few of the establishments were Italian, though.”

Eventually he returned to his home country, intending to spend a few months in Lido di Jesolo, close to Venice, before taking an opportunity to move to Australia.

Fate took a hand. He and his brother Luciano opened a restaurant — Espana Pizzeria — and the legend was born.

For eight years they ran the restaurant, and a second called Don Carlo’s on the strip that was the resort in the early 1970s. I remember holidaying there in 1972 with my first wife Margaret and probably ate at his place and it was in Jesolo that he met his wife Kathleen, a Middleton lass who was working her way through Europe towards a holiday job in Greece.

They fell in love, married and, when the economy hit the rocks Mario and Kathleen sold up and journeyed to Langley.

It was Mario’s first experience of England, and he spoke not a word of English. He enrolled at Manchester University as the first student on the Cambridge Course in English and eight months later was almost fluent. Well, he’s not really fluent even now, but everyone understands him . . .

He worked as waiter to keep the family — for by now Kathleen was pregnant with Carlo — and their plans to move to a new life in Nassau in the Bahamas were put on hold.

“I had to rethink my strategy altogether. I had to get a job and I was paid £7 a week, plus tips of course,” he said.

In 1977 he opened his first restaurant, Mario’s in Yorkshire Street, Rochdale — “a tiny half a cellar of a place” — and with the bravado of youth thought he would open a second in Oldham. “I got the keys to Monty’s and was on my way to look at the place when I stopped at the traffic lights at Yorkshire Street.

“I saw this place and the rest is history.”

That was in November, 1982 and 12 months later he sold Rochdale. “Mine was the first genuine Italian restaurant in North Manchester, but on the day I opened so did another one, where Romano’s is now. I couldn’t believe it!”

Twenty nine years on (and counting) Mario has many memories on his time in Yorkshire Street, saying: “I love my customers and, hopefully, they love me too. There are people coming here who came in the first week we opened and still they come back.”

Nowadays he works with his second son Benito, who has a degree in science but for two years has been part of the business. “I help him, and will always want to. I will always want to be a part of the business. Kathleen and I grew this business together and here we are, nearly 30 years on, still in business.” At the mention of his wife’s name his eyes cloud over, the twinkle dissipates...

Just over 11 years ago, after a long illness, she died and the memories, remain painful.

This was the second tragedy of his life for Carlo, his first born, died when he was six in “inexplicable, freakish circumstances” which Mario related remembering: “There came a point a point during the inquest, when the pathologists had been arguing back and forth, that I shouted out ‘That’s enough now!’”

Only a genuine, hot-blooded Latin could have got away with it.

Through it all Mario has maintained a dignified silence, the tragedies known by a few close friends, and continued to work with Ciao Italia, the UK federation of Italian restrauteurs, of which he was national president for seven years.

And the future for Mario?

He looks heavenwards and muses, almost silently before answering that he will continue to work at the restaurant, helping Benito and spending time with his new partner Jennifer and quite obviously adoring his grandson, a 13-months-old bundle of joy with Italian heritage and Welsh parentage through his daughter Manuela’s marriage.

Mario is one of us now, we’ve officially claimed him, but he remains in touch with his family in Italy and often returns home while keeping a weather eye on events in deepest Yorkshire Street.