“I have always loved it here because it’s like my Lake Garda — it’s like my home,” he said.

The Italian-born 45-year-old has had nine lives — and this one is the best one yet. The life with two happy, healthy, desperately wanted kids, after five years of IVF and four miscarriages. The life with his “intelligent, inspiring” wife Anna by his side, after two cancer scares in his younger years and two near fatal heart attacks in the more recent ones. He’s healthy. He’s happy. And he’s here.

“Now I sleep very well — I used to sleep a lot less, and I need sleep to be a high performer,” he said.

“I believe when you have an imbalance you burn out. You spend 16 hours at work and go in on your days off and then your family suffers.

“I want to be the best lover for my wife, the best father for my children, the best at golfing and surfing and jujitsu, and in my profession. I want to be inspiring — and be inspired.”

This inspired life starts at 5.30am with precisely 20 minutes of yoga and 15 minutes of breathing exercises, followed by Brazilian jujitsu, or a run, golfing or surfing depending on the day — and of course, the swell.

In this life, the man known around the world for his incredible food, only eats during a daily five hour block. Until 2pm, it’s nothing but water. He’ll eat a big late lunch or early dinner from 2pm to 7pm, and then it’s back to water.

Sometimes he doesn’t eat for two days. It helps with his rheumatoid arthritis. His jet lag. His energy levels.

It is worlds apart from the life he used to lead — the life that revolved around work. The life that revolved around death. The Cromer restaurateur has worked hard to get himself out of the ‘rabbit hole’ of depression that plagued him for decades.

The breathing helps. The diet changed everything. The activities help his mind connect with his body.

“I need discipline and I need structure,” Pavoni explained, slowly.

“ I learned that I need to be a high performer in anything I do — in my hobby, in my love, with the family, in my work and everything else.”

To do that, he breaks up his time to focus on each activity. Competitive golf every Friday in his backyard that is Cromer Golf Course. Brazilian jujitsu three mornings a week. Guitar. Yoga. Every Wednesday he and Anna go for a 45-minute run. Cooking. Being with his children, Jada, 4, and Luca, 2.

“I wanted to give up social media so all of these things — they don’t include a phone for at least the first hour and a half in the morning and the last hour before bed,” he said. “I’ve noticed a huge change — huge.”

A big inspiration for Pavoni is his mother Iolanda, who still lives in his Brescian hometown, in northern Italy, with his father Diego. She was the reason, he said, that he is here today. She got him through surviving cancer twice before the age of 25. The first time, he had a tumour the size of a tennis ball on his spine, between his shoulder blades. He had bone cancer and had 13 cycles of chemotherapy. The second time, it came back in his lung when he was 24.

“It was big thing to deal with at a young age,” he said. “But I am very lucky to have a wonderful family and mum. To believe in me and give me the energy to go through it — if it wasn’t for my mum, I’d be dead.”

Because of the cancer, he had a third of one lung removed and again endured invasive, painful treatment. The heart issues came later. He blames the radiation on his right lung, which he says burnt and damaged the arteries in his heart.

“I had a heart attack in my yoga class,” Pavoni recalled. “I didn’t know it was a heart attack — it went for two days and then I discovered it was a heart attack. They put a stent in, but the stent didn’t work and nine months later I had a massive heart attack while I was surfing, and a double bypass.”

Today, he takes no medications, insisting his good health and better mental health is completely diet related.

For a chef, one would imagine not eating would be difficult. And it was, at the start. But now, Pavoni is used to his self-imposed daily fast — and a life without pasta, rice, grains or sugar.

“That was the hardest thing to manage — I love food,” he said. “I have a wonderful head chef to cook it. I taste the food when I can and we develop menus together. They manage the day to day operations of the kitchen, I don’t do that anymore.”

He’s home for dinner with his beloved family about three or four nights a week. He met Anna when he first moved to Australia in 2001. He was a 28-year-old chef — she was a waitress.

“Anna is a wonderful, genuine, inspiring, beautiful, great soul,” he gushed. “She is energetic, and she is very clever. I wouldn’t be what I am what I am without her, in every aspect. We went through a lot to have our children.

“We had to do IVF and four we lost which is huge for us but now we have two and you just forget. It’s gone — in the past.”

He loves cooking with Jada and Luca, and tries to only speak to them in Italian.

“They are beautiful,” he said. “Perfect. So far, so good. And they love food. Real food. We don’t have any junk or beverages with sugar or juice or anything like that — we are water, no milk and limited dairy.

“Jada loves chicken liver parfait and she’s tried oysters, I cook her Thai curries and she loves them.”

Looking inside the plush dining room at his two-hatted restaurant, Ormeggio at The Spit, you can see how much Pavoni loves it here.

“When I came here, this restaurant was destroyed, ugly, closed, dirty — but this reminded me of our lakes,” he said.

“I come from Lake Garda, and I thought — this is it. So I bought the building and I took it from there. I love it. I couldn’t be happier.”