Massimo Mele remembers standing on an upturned milk crate to reach the sink in his parents’ restaurant, La Bella Napoli, in Glenorchy, Tasmania. “I would have been nine years old, but being in the kitchen was the only way I got to see my dad,” he says with a laugh.

Although his father wasn’t keen on him becoming a chef, Mele says it was almost inevitable. After training with Robert Castellani at Melbourne’s Donovans overlooking Port Phillip Bay, he headed up Hugo’s kitchens in Sydney for six years, before opening La Scala on Jersey in Woollahra. His life turned full circle in 2016, when he returned to Tasmania.