In loving memory
Con Amore
Founder, executive chef and the heart of everything we do.
Vitalia Zanda was never only the name above the door. She was Sardinian, and she cooked the way her island taught her: by hand, generously, without shortcuts. The face you see on the door and around the room is hers.
In 2019 she was diagnosed with cancer. She met it the way she met everything else, head on, and she wrote a book about it so that anyone walking the same road might feel a little less alone.
We lost Vitalia in 2023. Her recipes did not go with her: they are still what leaves this kitchen every night, cooked the way she taught us.
What she began, her family carries on.
Vitalia built this place with her husband Antonio Lo Conte, in equal measure and from the start. She came from Sardinia and ran the kitchen, and it is her cooking that brought these flavours to Cairns. He came from Avellino, in the hills behind Naples, and ran everything else: the floor, the books, the welcome at the door. On a good night he still picks up the guitar and sings.
What the two of them started is today a much-loved restaurant and pizzeria at The Pier, with Antonio and the family keeping her recipes and her standards exactly where she left them. Every pizza is made fresh, every pasta is made by hand, and every guest is welcomed like family.
Beyond the kitchen, Vitalia left something bigger, a story of courage, a book in her own words, and a cause we carry forward every year in her name.
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.
Illness should be met with love, if we want to turn it into an opportunity.Vitalia ZandaPaperback and Kindle, on Amazon
Every year we host a charity night in Vitalia's memory at the restaurant, in support of Cancer Council Australia and Ovarian Cancer Australia. It is one of the most important dates in our calendar.
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