"If I’m having my last meal on Earth, I’ll go for a big plate of sushi. If it’s a good Japanese restaurant, you’ve got me covered. I recently visited Sake in The Rocks. Pretty good. But hey, it makes me happy even if I go to my local Sushi Train. Sometimes it’s easier as I’m busy with three little kids. I don’t do a lot of lunches out like I used to do. A little sushi joint will do the job for me."
Can you taste the difference? "You can definitely taste the difference but when you eat sushi the fish must be fresh. If fish is fresh, it’s fresh. You just put it on top – done. For me the details are in the rice. That’s what counts. I think it’s the hardest part."
"Oh, you’re recording? OK, we start. Ciao! How are you? I’m Orazio." High five. "Nice to meet you."
It’s lunchtime and Orazio, of the eponymous Da Orazio, sits in a corner of his Bondi restaurant, a dozen staff in whites whirling around him during a bustling afternoon prep. He proudly directs me to the two jewels of his kitchen: an entire eighteen-kilo Berkshire pig revolving on a spit, and a pizza oven he shipped ten thousand miles from his hometown of Naples. The restaurant’s full name is ‘Da Orazio Pizza + Porchetta’ for a reason – Orazio’s wood-fired pizzas and rotisserie porchetta have earned renown in Bondi and throughout the city.
Orazio originally made his name after being appointed head chef of Sydney’s iconic Icebergs Dining Room & Bar, a short beachwalk from his current location. But it’s been a long journey to this moment.
I came here on a working holiday and fell in love with Bondi straight away.
"I came to Australia eighteen years ago this December," he says. "Me and one of my good friends were planning to leave Napoli to work, travel and learn a new language. My friend met a guy that was looking for a chef to bring to Sydney to open a pizza place. So I came here on a working holiday and fell in love with Bondi straight away. It all started from there."
He worked his way up in Sydney restaurants for the best part of a decade before being scouted by Icebergs restaurateur Maurice Terzini in 2013. A year later, Maurice and Orazio opened the first incarnation of Da Orazio at its current Hall Street spot, and Orazio moved across from Icebergs to head up the kitchen. After four years, Orazio and Maurice parted ways professionally: Orazio opened his own trattoria, Matteo, in Double Bay - and its CBD spin-off, Matteo Downtown - and Maurice turned Da Orazio into CicciaBella.
Last year, though, CicciaBella closed its doors and Orazio moved back in, using the money from the sale of Matteo to buy it outright from his former partner and good friend Maurice. And of course he had to change the name back again.
Orazio knows it’s confusing too.
"This place has changed so many times. When I bought it back I rechanged the name to Da Orazio, but even Google still doesn’t know what’s happening. It looks like this place has gone even though we reopened in March."
It doesn’t matter so long as it’s tasty
In the end, of course, he’s happy to be back in Bondi, the area he fell in love with when he first arrived from Italy nearly twenty years ago. Still, there are some Neopolitan delicacies that he misses. “In Napoli, even with five euros you can get some good stuff. And they fold the food - they call it “wallet pizza” - it becomes a triangle and you eat it upside down. You get your hands greasy because that’s what our street food is. It doesn’t matter so long as it’s tasty.”
