All in the family as kids follow parents’ fine-dining footsteps

The offspring of renowned Italian and Greek restaurateurs continue to follow their parents into the industry.

MatteoÕs Restaurant

They buried Beppi on Wednesday. Veteran Sydney restaurateur Beppi Polese made his exit at 90, leaving his eponymous restaurant in the hands of Marc, his son, and despite the loss, it’s a life-­affirming story of generational baton-­passing with a particularly Oz-euro accent.

Thankfully, it’s not an isolated one.

All over the country, the offspring of renowned Italian and Greek restaurateurs continue to follow their parents into the restaurant industry despite, in many cases, an elite education and the vocational opportunities their parents worked so hard to provide.

While generational footstep-following is a common part of ­Europe’s restaurant tradition, it is far less so here.

“I now understand the stress Lucio has been through over the years,’’ says Matteo Galletto in the dining room of his small restaurant Capriccio, in Leichhardt in Sydney’s inner west.

“In restaurants, every day you’re fixing little problems ... (but) when it all comes together, it’s a very rewarding thing. It’s been the right call,”

You may recognise the name: his father, Lucio, who came to Australia more than 40 years ago from Liguria, is one of the nation’s best-known Italian restaurateurs. He and wife Sally gave their children Matteo and Michaela an expensive private education and the support to study at university.

Michaela works at Lucio’s ­despite her degree in international relations. Matteo dropped out of university after a few years drifting, and fell in love with the restaurant game while living with his father’s family in Italy.

A year ago, after 10 years working under the family wing, he joined forces with an Italian mate, bought a run-down Leichhardt restaurant with potential, and opened his doors — the way his ­father had done more than 30 years ago in Paddington with Lucio’s.

“He still hasn’t gotten over it,” says Sally Galletto of her husband. “We’re proud and ‘oh-my-god’ at the same time.”

In Melbourne, it’s a not-so-­different story for the Grossi family, owners of five Italy-focused restaurants, including the prestigious Florentino trio, in Melbourne’s Bourke Street.

Guy Grossi, a successful chef and restaurateur, followed his ­father Pietro’s footsteps into cooking for a living 35 years ago. The ­rewards of his enterprise were the ability to raise a family in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs and send his children to elite schools.

Son Carlo began a degree after high school; he says his parents made it “anything but easy” for him to slip quietly out of tertiary education into waiting tables full time. “I was certainly encouraged to do a lot of different things when I finished school,” Grossi says, “but ultimately I realised that I’d always been in love with what we (as a family) do.”