Milestones Icon: Blue Parrot

Some families have cooking in their DNA.

That’s the case with the Colacci family, which has been running the Blue Parrot restaurant in Louisville since 1919.

Five generations have worked at the landmark restaurant at 640 Main St.

According to family legend, the Blue Parrot’s origin begins with Colacci family matriarch Mary Colacci, who, like her husband, Mike, was a first generation immigrant. Mary regularly cooked large family meals, and she soon welcomed everyone in Louisville to her regular Sunday Italians feasts.

The meals were a hit with Louisville’s sizable Italian community, but their popularity crossed the borders of the growing mining town’s ethnic…