Gold Coast’s own singing chefs put their big Italian wedding on the menu at De Vito’s
THIS couple has been run off their feet at their restaurant and too busy to elope. Instead of a getaway, they’re getting married in the place you’d least expect. Check out our most unusual nuptials.
Gold Coast
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DAVID De Vito and Tarscha Waddington have been making sweet music and tasty Italian fare at their De Vito Waterfront Restaurant, in Southport, for almost two years.
Masters of all aspects of their business — from home-making the restaurant’s renowned pasta and sauces to mixing cocktails, ordering stock, training staff and overseeing the accounts in-between performing for diners — it’s hardly surprising the couple have found it hard to find time to run away and elope.
It’s why the lovebirds have decided to tie the knot in front of their foodie family and friends — including loyal customers — on the job.
“It’s a thank you to all the people who’ve supported us,” Waddington said.
The singing chefs will christen their new wedding rotunda on the restaurant deck overlooking the Broadwater on Tuesday when they finally walk down the aisle 10 years after they first met.
De Vito, an Australia’s Got Talentgrand finalist, has written a special love song for Waddington, Soltanto Tu, for what’s sure to be one of the most entertaining weddings of the year.
“It means only you, forever you,” he said.
Former staff members from the restaurant are flying in from around the country not just to attend the wedding, but to donate their services to the happy couple for their big day, with the restaurant’s head chef serving as De Vito’s best man.
“We’ve got some great staff,” De Vito said.
“We take them on not as staff, but as part of the family.”
The couple met on the Coast when they were introduced by a mutual friend.
“I was gigging around the Coast and a guy I knew introduced me to “this amazing country singer” — Tarscha,” De Vito said.
“I didn’t know much about the genre of music she was performing but I gravitated towards her as a person — she had the most amazing smile.”
Waddington said the first song she remembers singing for De Vito was one of her originals — The Sound of Love.
“It’s a heartbreak song,” she said, laughing.
“It was just amazing,” pianist, guitarist and composer De Vito said.
“It gave me goosebumps. It was such a revelation.
“Tarscha’s quite sarcastic and funny and witty. It was her talent and her character that attracted me.”
Waddington became De Vito’s manager as his career took them around the world for eight years before they decided to open their own restaurant two years ago.
A member of Gold Coast restaurant royalty, De Vito had tasted success as a singing chef during his 13-year stint at Italian restaurant Ciao, in Labrador, long before he met Waddington.
“Tarscha said she knew nothing about restaurants — “I don’t even know how to eat at one, let alone run one’,” he said.
“I said I’ll guide you. Here’s the formula to what my success was in the past.
“We started and it was a huge learning curve for me to get back on the horse and for Tarscha to learn the machine that is a restaurant but she took to it like an absolute pro.
“Everything we do is from scratch — no stocks or bases, we make all our sauces from scratch, make all our own pasta and bread.”
The couple are also born entertainers, stirring each other as they stir steaming pots of sauce, microphone in one hand, a customer’s order in the other.
It’s a unique recipe that’s proven a stellar success, with the vocalist/chefs enjoying applause and standing ovations for their pasta and performances of classics such as O Sole Mio, Nessun Dorma and The Prayer.
The couple will honeymoon in Italy while their restaurant undergoes a major refit from August 14 to August 30.
They’ll be back in time to join tenor Raffaele Pierno, direct from Naples, for A Night at the Opera on August 31.
Pierno will perform Italian classic showstoppers — or as De Vito prefers to call them, “big Wog songs” — to celebrate the refurbishment.
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