One of eastern Sydney’s beloved butcher shops will shut within days due to extended roadworks associated with the M6 construction, according to the owners.

Almost 46 years after he opened Pino’s Dolce Vita in Kogarah, butcher Pino Tomini Foresti will close his all-Italian butchery-deli-cafe on President Avenue. The last day of trade will be Tuesday, December 31.

“I haven’t been sleeping for the last month, thinking I’m going to lose what we created,” says Tomini Foresti, who helped champion independent production of smallgoods in Sydney. With wife Pia, he has served locals and cross-town regulars for decades, focusing on quality meats, sausages, prosciutto, salami and 𝄒nduja alongside accompaniments such as cheeses, condiments, sauces and house-made passata.

Since construction on the M6 motorway began three years ago, Pino’s Dolce Vita has been confined behind the dusty roadworks of a multi-lane highway, which Pino claims has deterred customers from visiting the shop. The only option now, Pia Tomini Foresti says, is to shut their doors. “We’ve overcome a lot of things that came our way. Even through COVID, we survived. But this has just been crazy,” she says. “Since the M6 works began, we’ve just been hammered.”

From its early days, Pino’s attracted South American and Italian customers of every regional heritage, who would bring personal or family recipes. Pino, who himself is of Calabrian origin and came from a butcher’s family, hung bespoke seasonal salami while his customer base and sausage selection expanded to cater for migrants from South America, Greece, Malta, France and the Philippines.

Word got out, and the business grew to serve food-focused shoppers from across the city and interstate who were drawn to products “made the real way”, as Pino’s packaging explains. Pino used meat from the best producers, custom cuts, sustainable-farming suppliers and a natural curing and fermentation process, with no starches or preservatives.

After an electrical fire destroyed the interiors in 2016, the business took the opportunity to reposition, refurb and reopen with a new in-house cafe and eatery. The fire also prompted the family to set up a separate, wholesale premises in Kingsgrove. This will continue to operate.

Last weekend, customers came from far and wide buying up big and sitting down for pasta, panini and salumi platters. “There will be a lot of people missing them,” says customer Ross MacRae, who arrived with several cooler bags. So did Vicki Volikas from Pymble. “We came all the way for a final lunch,” she says of a meal of tomato-topped cannelloni norma with eggplant, fresh and salted ricotta filling and pork cotoletta with Napoletana sauce and buffalo mozzarella. “It’s really sad,” says her friend Belinda Swan. “He’s so unique. It’s a shame.”

Pino is grateful for the support his business has received from the community over the years. “I love what I do. If something I give my customers and their families makes them happy, that’s the most beautiful thing in the world,” he says.

Daughter Carla Filipovski feels it’s time her parents took it easier, while hinting at a possible new direction for the family: “It’s not over ... We will reinvent without Dad, but the name will always be ‘Pino’. He just doesn’t have to be the front-of-house any more.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that the wholesale premises were run by sons Fabiano and Marco Tomini Foresti. The correct operators are son Fabiano Tomini Foresti and son-in-law Michael Filipovski.