Con amore. Our family, our kitchen, and everyone who has ever pulled up a chair.
In loving memory
Vitalia Zanda
She was Sardinian, and she cooked the way her island taught her: by hand, generously, without shortcuts. The face on the door and around the room is hers.
In 2019 she was diagnosed with cancer. She met it head on and wrote a book about it, so that anyone walking the same road might feel less alone. We lost Vitalia, but her recipes stayed: they are still what leaves this kitchen every night.
Illness should be met with love, if we want to turn it into an opportunity.Vitalia Zanda, The Cure is Me
An Italian family on the waterfront
Vitalia ran the kitchen. Her husband Antonio Lo Conte, from Avellino in the hills behind Naples, ran everything else: the floor, the books, the welcome at the door. On a good night he still picks up the guitar and sings.
Every pizza is made fresh, every pasta by hand, and every guest is welcomed like family.
The Cure is Me
La Cura Sono Io
Written in her own words after her diagnosis in 2019, about refusing to treat the illness as an enemy and listening to what it had to say instead. It closes with recipes worked out for people going through chemotherapy, when almost nothing tastes like it should.
Paperback and Kindle, on AmazonA charity night in her name
Every year we host La Cura Sono Io at the restaurant, in Vitalia’s memory, for Cancer Council Australia and Ovarian Cancer Australia. One of the most important dates in our calendar.
