Best Australian Racing Stories (39 page)

Romano also saw himself as a great patron of the theatre and the arts, particularly of the opera, and regularly played host to Toti Del Monte and other stars when they were in Australia. Romano hosted Monte's wedding reception in 1928 with ‘thousands of people, champagne and diamonds, and a big gondola of orchids'.

Another celebrated guest was Gracie Fields. ‘She came out to sing to the troops during the war,' Romano later recalled, ‘and stayed at my house.'

Over the years many famous celebrities dined at Romano's, including Vivien Leigh, who was served by the same waiter who had attended her table in London years before, and knew exactly how she liked her chicken marina. Maurice Chevalier went there every night with his pianist and his wife to drink chianti. ‘He was in Sydney 26 days and didn't miss a single meal at my restaurant,' Romano boasted. ‘That was the greatest honour anyone ever paid me. Frenchmen know their food.' Bob Hope, Katharine Hepburn and Frank Sinatra went there, too. Prince Philip, then a young naval lieutenant, dined at Romano's regularly during his service with the Royal Navy.

For those in the know, ‘going down the mine' meant descending the wide, thickly carpeted staircase past a bust of Napoleon for a night at Romano's. Tony, the headwaiter, immaculate in tails, ushered patrons to their tables; another waiter would present the
carte
de jour
; and a third would serve cocktails; a white-aproned attendant would then arrive with bread rolls.

Azzalin Romano was born Orlando Azzalin in Padua in northern Italy and spent his childhood in Verona, where his father was an official in the postal department. Young Orlando wanted to travel the world and, aged ten, he and a 14-year-old companion took a train to Vienna, where he found a job as a pageboy at Vienna's posh Hotel Bristol.

He was paid 15 shillings a week, barely enough to cover his education at the night school from which he eventually matriculated. Romano later summarised his own success story with the phrase, ‘from pageboy to receptionist, to waiter, to cook, to wine butler, to head waiter, to manager, to managing director'.

From the Hotel Bristol he moved about the best hotels and restaurants in Nice, Monte Carlo, Paris and Berlin, and even travelled to the Czar's Russia to become a headwaiter at the Palace.

‘I had the pleasure of attending every king of those days,' he later recalled.

His secret, he said, was that he always pursued what he termed ‘the experience of the first class'. He explained, ‘I wanted only to learn the highest standards in my business. In all my life I have refused to work in cheap places even if it meant taking less money.'

Young Romano had his wish to see the world and, along the way, became fluent in five languages—English, Italian, Spanish, German and French. He also worked on the big European railway trains before eventually heading for England, where his first job involved 18 hours a day as a waiter at the Savoy Hotel, for 5 shillings a week.

Over the next 15 years he climbed the grade, through boarding houses and private hotels, into positions of authority with the Ritz-Carlton Company, the Savoy Company and the Gordon Company. Among the leading hotel restaurants he managed were the Hyde Park Hotel and, in 1922, the Ritz. During those years Romano was also a crack amateur cyclist, winning three gold cups at London's Stamford Bridge track.

It was in England that Romano first learned about racing, but because his job kept him in hotels 16 hours a day he became a punter by betting on the phone. His only ventures to the track were when he waited on the King and Queen during lunch in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.

While he was headwaiter at the Ritz, Romano found it a major cause of irritation when customers would ask for his name but misunderstand it, mispronounce it or fail to catch it. Then an inspiration came one day as he walked past Romano's Restaurant in London. He immediately changed his name by deed poll. He later explained, ‘Romano was so easy to remember. It's just like George in Italian. I have nothing against my original name, a first-class name in Italy, but you have to consider business.'

At an Ascot race meeting while he was in charge of a refreshment marquee for members of the Royal Automobile Club of England, Romano met a Sydney gent named David Stuart Dawson. Dawson persuaded Romano to come to Australia from London, in 1923, to work at a restaurant venture called Ambassadors, which, in its size, aims and expense, was indeed a pioneering step in the Sydney of that time. Several hundred thousand pounds were invested in the lavish establishment, but the response of Sydney's nightlife didn't meet the hopes of its promoters.

The flamboyant Romano quickly became a favourite of the social columns, which took delight in recording the details of his regular sojourns overseas.

For example, in 1934 it was exciting news that Romano, his wife and two children took a six-month trip and motored through England, Scotland, France, Italy and Switzerland. When he returned his opinions were extensively sought: that Vienna was no longer ‘the fairyland of Fame', that London was now ‘the brightest capital in Europe' and that Paris, in comparison, was ‘a dead city'.

The social butterflies were especially interested in his news of ‘the latest novelties in cafe entertainment' from the continent, notably that London cabarets were employing more and more American artists and were becoming brighter, and that the latest craze was to have small dancing floors.

Romano would sit in a corner of his club, with characteristic pipe or Havana cigar in hand and a glass of Scotch in front of him, and conduct proceedings. He later installed a portrait of his champion Bernborough in his special corner, and held court below it.

If he was throwing a party of his own, he would adjourn to a private dining room and sing for his guests. As a chorister in his youth, Romano had sung in the High Mass at St Mark's in Venice and at St Anthony's in Padua. During the 1914–18 war he sang at a charity performance in Covent Garden and later he sang at Ambassadors.

‘My voice is baritone,' he would declare, ‘but I don't know a note of music. My method is to buy a record by a first-class singer, then shut myself in a room and play it over and over again and try to imitate it.'

His favourite song was the prologue from Pagliacci.

During the Depression years Romano and his friends initiated the ‘plonk club'. ‘In those years,' he later explained, ‘there were still a few of us who liked to eat good food and drink fine wines, but we just couldn't afford it. So we decided to keep up appearances, to keep the flag flying. We gave away the fine imported wines and bought plonk.' For 5 shillings a member of the ‘plonk club' could have a good meal, half a bottle of plonk and an Australian cigar. Lunch lasted from midday until 4 p.m. and if you were late it meant you must have been doing some business and that meant you shouted for the club.

Romano's, like all nightspots of the era, did a roaring trade in sly grog. In 1935, on one of the rare occasions it encountered any official interference over this matter, a waiter and house manager were each fined £50 for selling sparkling hock at 12 shillings a bottle without a licence.

A police sergeant told the licensing court that the premises were frequented by people of high standing and liquor was sold extensively. He added that the place was run as a cabaret and was always open to the early hours in the morning.

Thereafter, Romano took the necessary precautions and, significantly, Police Commissioner Bill MacKay dined regularly at Romano's restaurant ‘on the house'.

However, Romano was personally prosecuted in a Sydney court early in World War II and fined £500 for having presented a false statement of income. In his 1940 annual report, the Commonwealth Taxation Commissioner revealed that, between 1932 and 1938, Romano understated his income by £38,058, adding that this was a case of suspected fraud.

For the most part Romano was always scrupulously careful about his and his establishment's public image. When some influential citizens took a dim view of the high-spirited festivities within his site during the darkest years of World War II, Romano was quick to take on the image of, first and foremost, a man with the national interest at heart. Hence, in April 1943, he announced that his restaurant's famous afternoon tea dance was not to be held in future during working hours ‘because of the manpower shortage and in the interests of the war effort'.

During the 1940s the
Adelaide News
said of him, ‘This Romano is a personality, handsome, debonair, always immaculately dressed. He has an infectious smile, is a sparkling raconteur and is also a gifted after-dinner speaker. He sings well, and at parties is the life and soul of the company.'

The
Sydney Daily Mirror
tagged him, ‘The man who went to Randwick in striped pants and frock coat, spats, grey topper and diamonds.'

Romano had amassed a small fortune from the illegal beer and spirits trade. When matters came to a head during the 1953 Liquor Royal Commission he admitted that he ‘carried on for many years' at Romano's Restaurant selling liquor, which he bought on the black market without a permit. He revealed he was also a shareholder and director of the company which owned the notorious Colony Club sly grog den, in the southern suburbs on the Georges River.

Romano's two great passions were restaurants and racehorses and he pursued both with a flair which guaranteed him regular appearances in the headlines. He bought his first horse in 1943 but, within three years, became famous as the owner of Bernborough, ‘the Toowoomba Tornado' who won 15 races in succession in 1946 and, according to a newspaper of the time, ‘captured the imagination of the racing public as no horse since the fabulous days of Phar Lap'.

Azzalin Romano raced many other top horses over the following seasons. At one point his string totalled 37 thoroughbreds.

In 1946 he paid the top price of 4300 guineas at the annual Easter Yearling Sales for a colt by French sire Le Grand Duc, from a mare called Vocal. The colt was a half-brother to the well-performed Modulation and, after what papers described as a ‘brisk bidding duel with Mr A. Basser of Sydney', Romano bought the horse and named it Caruso. It won many good races.

The next year he again paid top price, 3500 guineas, for a bay colt by Midstream from Idle Woods, making it a full brother to Shannon. Romano named the colt Bernbrook and as a three-year-old it won the 1948 Chelmsford Stakes, beating Carbon Copy, Dark Marne and Columnist, and the 1949 Doncaster Handicap at Randwick.

During those years Romano also raced Lady Ajax, Bronze Gold, Grand Romance, Rimini and Haydock, and paid 3500 guineas for a half-brother to On Target and 2700 guineas for a brother of Flying Duke.

In 1950 Romano sold Bernbrook and Caruso to another US millionaire, William Goetz, Louis Meyer's son-in-law. It triggered a sudden announcement by Harry Plant that he had broken off his celebrated relationship with Romano because he had been ‘unfairly treated'.

One newspaper of the time noted, ‘Romano's zeal to rake in the dollars led to a bitter break with Plant, his trainer, friend and racing counsellor.' Horses trained by Plant for Romano had won a fortune—more than £50,000 in prize money, including more than £26,000 by Bernborough.

Plant, upset that Romano had sold Bernbrook and Caruso while on a trip to the USA, said he had no hint of the plan and declared, ‘Romano and I are through for all time'. He also revealed that, after an exchange of letters, Romano, through his lawyer, had ordered Plant to quit the racing stables in Prince Street, Randwick, which Romano owned and Plant occupied and operated in.

Romano, who lived in a £40,000 Killara mansion and also ran a roadhouse near Liverpool on Sydney's western outskirts, continued to race many horses through the 1950s, but had wound down his interest in the sport by the end of the decade. His enthusiasm in culinary entrepreneurial opportunities led to frequent bursts of excitement. At one point in the 1950s he announced a grand plan to establish a chain of luxury restaurants around the capital cities in time for the 1956 Olympic games in Melbourne; the scheme did not eventuate.

With the arrival of the 1960s the old Sydney nightlife scene was changing, and Romano sold his famous restaurant in 1964.

The
Sunday Telegraph
summed it up thus:

The salad days for the former Italian bellhop had been the 30s and 40s, when it was still profitable and desirable to run a grand restaurant. The mood survived into the early 1950s but was gone long before Romano sold out and retired. Napoleon's bust still casts a brave face in the foyer, but the grandeur had withered, the menu that offered 350 splendid dishes had diminished and a swarm of captains and waiters who had smoothly served the tables had shrunk.

After he sold out, Romano's became a discotheque-style nightspot called ‘Romano Au Go-Go'.

Romano then left Sydney on a world tour, but in early 1966 he suffered heart problems while travelling in East Africa, and a Ugandan surgeon administered what one newspaper described as ‘frequent painkilling injections during a dramatic mercy flight' to the USA, where he underwent emergency surgery.

The three-hour operation, for the removal of an arterial aneu-rism, involved removal of several inches of weak, ballooning artery and its replacement by a synthetic section made of Dacron.

Romano's English wife, Alice, died in 1971. Their son Renzo had also been a restaurateur in Sydney in the late 1950s before heading for the USA in 1962, where he managed the airport restaurant in Honolulu; later he set out on the American mainland as a professional tennis coach. Romano also had one daughter.

Azzalin Romano lived out his latter years in a flat in exclusive Point Piper, overlooking Sydney Harbour, and died in St Vincent's Hospital in November 1972, aged 78.

Racing as it was

A.B. (‘BANJO') PATERSON

I FIRST BUTTED INTO
the racing game about 60 years ago when I was taken as a small boy to Randwick and saw two three-year-olds, Chester and Cap-a-Pie, run a dead heat in a 3-mile race and they ran the dead heat off the same afternoon.