Overview

In the 1950s when Carlo Valmorbida bought King & Godfree, a grocery store that had only two other owners since opening on the corner of Lygon and Faraday Streets in Carlton in 1871, the newly arrived immigrant from Italy helped drive a culinary revolution in Melbourne by being among the first to introduce non-Italian Melbourne to the delights of parmesan cheese and good olive oil, quality canned tuna and excellent dry table wine. He did this not just by stocking these then-exotic products but by explaining to the wider community who frequented his grocery store why they were so good and how to shop for and cook with them.   Just like King & Godfree itself, King & Godfree: The Corner Grocer honours Carlo’s spirit by detailing how to buy the best Italian cheese, the appropriate canned tomato, the best quality anchovies, which pasta shapes and sauces go best together and what wine to drink with them, then teaming this knowledge with more than 80 recipes, from cocktails to cannoli.   Through stories, recipes and insider knowledge about great ingredients, The Corner Grocer creates an intricate portrait of King & Godfree, one of the oldest, continuously-operating grocery stores in Australia as it negotiated a century-and-a-half of continuous operation just by paying attention to the quality of its food and service and to the evolving appetites of its ever-changing community.   It’s the story of how King & Godfree both reflected the nature of the community around it while simultaneously influencing the way an entire city eats.   Now with more than 150 years under our belt and a renovation that has brought new life to a Melbourne institution, we decided it was a good time to celebrate. The Corner Grocer is an invitation to the party.

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Luisa Valmorbida is the daughter of Carlo and Elsie who bought King & Godfree in the 1950s. The family’s commercial fishing boat (the one that caught all the tuna for the family’s Sirena tuna brand for a decade or so) was named after her and she worked at K&G as a young woman as a “hopeless bookkeeper” but her connection to the store has always been less about business, more about food and community. Luisa’s grandmother lived in Carlton and had Luisa help her cook from a young age. Her gateway to Italian cooking was mostly her nonna’s traditional family recipes from the Veneto region where the family has its roots, “so there were lots of spices in her food that had been traded in Venice over the centuries – like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves”. Luisa also learned how to make pasta from her grandmother, picked up a few kitchen moves from her dad Carlo who was a very good cook (though not one particularly bothered with recipes) and then was taught about cooking food from the Lazio by from her mother-in-law who was born in Rome. About 25 years ago, Luisa opened a cooking school with her aunt at her aunt’s house in Toorak, “the first to teach authentic Italian cooking in Melbourne”. The cooking school was constantly sold out, not just for the authenticity of the lessons but, as Luisa suspects, “because my very handsome, charming and single uncle Mariano would come and talk about the Italian wine we were serving”. “One thing we have always had as a family is a love for good food,” she says. “And to be able to sell good food, authentic food – like prosciutto sliced and wrapped the correct way or good quality parmesan – has always been very important both to me and the family. But it’s also about tradition. You hear people say: my mother and grandmother used to come here, it’s like always been here. I think that’s what we’re still trying to provide, some sense of community.”   Despite Matteo Toffano already being the Head Chef and General Manager at King & Godfree, Agostino and Johnny’s Green Room, he has also been able to help write and test scores of recipes and hard-won intel about great ingredients for K&G’s first cook book. Veneto-born Matteo’s seeming obliviousness to pressure comes from his cheffing background in some of the world’s great Italian restaurants and his appearance in multiple high-pressure culinary competitions (finalist in the Unilever chef of the year 2017 and 2018, silver medallist at the Battle of the Pacific at the Fine Food Melbourne 2014, and gold medallist at the first Italian cooking cup 2012). Matteo has cooked in the three Michelin star restaurant Le Calandre with chef Massimiliano Alajmo and was chef de cuisine at Melbourne’s Grossi Florentino for many years where he also travelled extensively with owner-chef Guy Grossi presenting Italian cooking to students and enthusiasts and highlighting the importance of Australia’s produce and culture.   Michael Harden is an author, journalist, copywriter, screenwriter and editor who worked in restaurants in various parts of the world for 15 years in order to support his writing habit. He now spends much of his time writing about restaurants and bars, all the while hoping one day to finish that elusive novel. He’s written and contributed to more than 15 books, some cook books co-written with chefs, others cultural histories that explore how food culture shapes and influences society as a whole. It’s a good way to justify continuing to eat and drink in all the tastiest places and to keep the conversations going with the creative movers and shakers who make those places happen.

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