And John Gambaro is doing that right now, literally, serving his latest customer with the sort of heightened attentiveness an artist brings to the canvas.

He’s shovelling generous fillets of “Stanbroke Wagyu Marble (Score 9+) Eye Fillet’’ my way, heaping them onto the plate while simultaneously gesturing his head towards a selection of sauces artfully arranged on the side of the table at his “Black Hide by Gambaro’’ restaurant at Treasury Brisbane.

There’s Bearnaise, Mushroom, Peppercorn and Red Wine Jus and then there’s the mixed leaf salad and those hand cut chips with aioli to gaze at while John, his voice a silken murmur, expounds expertly on the steak’s luscious texture, nourished by all that intramuscular fat.

“It’s so rich, so smooth, you really don’t need much of it,’’ he says, reassuringly.

Given I’m paying, he’s already insisted we polish off one dozen Coffin Bay (South Australia) oysters, acting as the perfect precursor to this meticulously prepared feast which might be said to have its genesis 87 years ago and 14,000 kilometres away from the table in Falena, Calabria, Italy.

That was where Brisbane’s hospitality maestro, Michael Gambaro, John’s father and the man who started a Queensland dynasty, was born in 1937.

Michael left Italy aged 13 and the Gambaro family settled in North Queensland in the 1950s before heading to the big smoke.

There, in the state capital Michael, wife Josie and brother Domenico, began selling fruit and veg on Brunswick Street in the Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley before starting a fish and chip shop in Caxton Street in 1974.

That generation of the Gambaro clan worked those 14 hour days required to transform that fish and chip shop into what is now part of the city’s culinary and cultural landscape _ Gambaro’s Seafood Restaurant.

Gambaro’s is one of those restaurants that people not only go to, but like to be seen to go to.

It has hosted not only Australian premiers and prime ministers but world leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel during the G20 in Brisbane and international celebrities such as Ed Sheeran and Elton John.

There may be some truth in the old adage that, when it comes to family wealth, the first generation makes it, the second generation consolidates it and the third generation loses it, but John Gambaro appears not to have heard of it.

Because he hasn’t been consolidating.

He’s been expanding, and at such a frenetic pace the Gambaro name is not one which conjures up the phrase “successful small business” but now speaks of a rapidly emerging corporate heft.

The Gambaros run two Black Hide restaurants specialising in Stanbroke beef – one on the site of the family’s original seafood outlet on the southern side of Caxton Street, and the one we are at in the heart of the city.

The family also operate the Persone Italian restaurant in the W Hotel at North Quay and the recently opened Mediterranean restaurant Pipi’s – with the adjoining “Awaken Café” – right on top of Point Danger on the southern end of the Gold Coast.

They are meanwhile deep into the fit-out of a new restaurant venture that will be perched on a prime location just off the new footbridge at the soon-to-open Queens Wharf precinct.

And while they sold their hotel and seafood restaurant properties on the northern side of Caxton Street to the NRL two years ago – reportedly for more than $17m – the Gambaros still operate both.

“You just do it for the money,’’ I say between mouthfuls of Wagyu in a comment which, in print, could be interpreted as a vulgar insult but, in the spirit of the conversation, is simply acknowledged as an accurate observation.

John doesn’t miss a beat, nodding his head vigorously, cheerfully confirming that, of course, the entire Gambaro operation is a commercial venture designed to make a profit.

But, when it comes to hospitality, money won’t materialise if it’s your primary focus, he insists.

Good food is at the centre of the equation, and right next to that is the art of service.

There is a quite distinct “art’’ to hospitality, and John’s is widely recognised as one of the great “artistes’’ of the game.

He freely acknowledges the skill comes straight down the blood line from his father, Michael.

“Let me tell you something about my father,’’ he says.

”If you were to come in at 11 at night into his restaurant and want a meal, he would look around and say, ‘well that’s turned off and that’s turned off and there’s nobody in the kitchen but, look, I will cook you something myself.

“And we would do that even at the end of a 14 or 15 hour day, and he was a pretty good cook.

“That showed me the genuine love for people that he had, and the energy that he got out of people was incredible _ he loved seeing people happy.’’

John sees the family’s current success as flowing on directly from that impulse to feed a stranger.

It has worked, demonstrably well, yet like most hugely successful individuals and families the Gambaros have never quite viewed themselves as having reached their goal _ never allowed themselves to rest on their laurels, and for good reason.

“Hospitality is the toughest business there is,’’ says John.

The pitfalls of the industry are not all related to cash flows _ the customers themselves can pose sometimes serious problems.

Disgraced Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale, who ended up in a prison cell on corruption charges, was once a regular customer – so regular he was presented with his own personalised steak knife etched with his name, a sepcial touch the Gambaros offer to their most powerful and wealthy regulars.

That association (there was never any suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of the Gambaro family) led to John himself appearing as a witness in the Crime and Corruption Commission’s Ipswich council probe.

And then, when Covid struck in 2020 the family believed for a few months they were facing their Waterloo.

Literally thousands of family run restaurants were closing their doors across the state and the nation, and for many it was not temporary.

The Gambaros not only survived but prospered, setting up their own version of an Uber Eats, using BMW cars emblazoned with their signage to ferry food across the city in specialised packaging as they maintained total control of their product from the kitchen to the customer’s doorstep.

Michael was still alive then, watching on approvingly as the emerging generations fought for survival.

He died in November 2020 at age 83, at the height of Covid and his funeral mass at St Brigid’s Catholic Church in Red Hill was limited to 100 people,

Yet the service was live streamed back to the restaurant and scores more lined the streets as the funeral cars were driven by while everyone from the Premier to State of Origin Coach Wayne Bennett felt moved enough to make a public tribute.

Bennett, whose own life has largely been about mentoring young men, recalled the man who once mentored him:

“I was working in the Gambaro’s grocery store in New Farm (in the 1960s), stacking shelves and delivering groceries on my bike, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job but Michael told me I wasn’t doing it properly,” he said.

“I realised I had to change to do what he wanted. It’s a lesson I’ve carried throughout my coaching life _ give people feedback on their performance and give them an opportunity to change.’’

John also values his memories and, like Bennett’s, they’re not all self-indulgent or sentimental.

He recalls as a young man in his 20s driving to the Brisbane seafood markets to buy produce in the early hours of the morning, but not as early as he should have been, given he had been hitting Brisbane’s night clubs the night before.

The still novel mobile phone would ring and he would hear his father’s voice say: “Are you there yet?’’.

He would answer “yes dad,’’ and there would be a long pause before his father’s reply: “Do you really think I’m stupid?’’

He could be tough on them all, given he was toughest on himself, and it was only in the days after Michael’s death that John realised how much wealth his old man has accumulated in this world.

Michael Gambaro died wealthy and was also a philanthropist.

The family have built on that tradition, raising $1.8 million for the Courier Mail Children’s Fund and forming a partnership with the Wesley Hospital for their annual Prostate Cancer Awareness Lunch.

His will, as is so often the case with wealthy families, became the centrepiece of a family brawl, with several branches of the family launching legal bids against executers in a battle which reached the Supreme Court but appears to have ended without any enduring animosity.

John insists that his own reference to his father’s wealth has little to do with either money or possessions.

“After the funeral I realised that his life wasn’t about money but about the people he drew to him and who loved him and wanted to keep in touch with us and let us know how much he had met to them.’’

The legacy he left was simple _ love people, serve them good food, be happy in their successes and never, ever compare yourself to them, because once you start doing that, “you’re lost.’’

“If it turns out that I am half as good a man as my father, I will be happy,’’ says John.

Meal finished, the scion of the city’s seafood clan is asked to rate the 200 mg Stanbroke eye fillet and the 200 mg Sirloin, warned he is forbidden from delivering a score of 10 because that would imply total perfection.

Food may be important, so may service, but John Gambaro also has an eye for marketing his brand.

“I give it a 12,’’ he declares.