Paris has the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but another site in the French capital has caught the eye of Australian visitors this holiday season: a restaurant with a menu, logo and name that’s strikingly similar to Australia’s popular Italian eatery, Totti’s.

“It has come to my attention that we have a doppelganger in our midst,” @missdoublebay wrote on Instagram. “Totti (with no ’s), a [sic] Italian restaurant located in Paris. The like4like is UNCANNY.”

@missdoublebay is not the only one who can see the similarities. Justin Hemmes, chief executive of Merivale, owner of Totti’s, said he’s aware of the Paris restaurant. “Don’t they say ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’? I’m not sure I agree with that.”

The mega Aussie hospitality group opened its first Totti’s in Sydney’s Bondi in 2018, and the empire now stretches from Sydney’s CBD and Rozelle to Lorne in Victoria. Its menu, created by executive chef Mike Eggert, features pastas, an array of antipasti and its most famous dish, its wood-fired puffy bread. While Totti in Paris doesn’t have a pouffed bread on its menu, it features a number of similar dishes such as tiramisu, burrata and schnitzel.

This is not the first Australian restaurant this has happened to. David Thompson’s seminal Sydney 1990s Darley Street Thai eatery had an imitator in Asia.

Laura Dalrymple, co-owner of ethical butcher Feather and Bone, has outlets in Sydney’s Marrickville and Waverley, but not overseas. “I have people say ‘I just went to your store in Hong Kong’. No, you didn’t.” Feather and Bone opened in Sydney in 2006, while the Hong Kong Feather & Bone opened in 2015.

Dalrymple wrote to its owners without success. “I didn’t have the resources (at the time) to pursue it, and we hadn’t trademarked our brand outside Australia,” she says.

“The international trademark is key,” says Sydney restaurateur George Nahas, who owned Paddington’s Fat Duck Cafe in Olympics-era Sydney. He decided to repurpose the name and open Fat Duck Rotisserie Kitchen at Darling Quarter in 2011. The Fat Duck also happens to be the name of British celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant in England.

“He [Blumenthal] had the international trademark, so we had to change the name. It was really costly. Everything had to go, right down to the receipt rolls (with the name on them). The only people who make money are lawyers.”

Good Food has reached out to Totti in Paris for comment.