Meet Our Makers: Stefano de Pieri of Stefano’s

Stefano de Pieri is an acclaimed restaurateur, television presenter, chef and owner of Stefano’s Restaurant in Mildura, Victoria.

He is the creator of Stefano’s, a best-loved, handmade gourmet range filled with Italian finesse. This iconic brand melds Italian tradition with exuberant, seasonal regional produce.

Stefano was recently the recipient of an Order of Australia. Stefano’s Restaurant is the recipient of many prestigious awards and continues to attract the support of many patrons.

C&C: Hi Stefano! Can you tell us a bit about the early days of Stefano’s? Where did the idea come from and how did the business get started?

Stefano: When I got married, I came to live in Mildura - which is the home of my wife. We met in Melbourne and I had no idea about the extent of the operation that her parents were conducting here, so when I came here I was startled by the enormous pace of their old, rambling hotel.

I was taken by the underground space, which was quite cool in both senses of the word - temperature cool because it was underground, but also cool because it’s the oldest space in the town, built in 1888. It had a labyrinth of cool rooms, which were designed to chill vast amounts of beer because - by a quirk of history - The Grand Hotel had a monopoly on the sale of liquor until 1988.

By 1988, that privilege ceased to exist and their contract with the state government finished. We had all of this space, and I suggested to my father in law that we turn it into a drinking hole for wine. By 1990, wine was becoming the dominant form of drink at the time. Beer had declined (and is still declining). My intention was to open a wine bar, but people were not quite ready for that - they wanted food. So initially we did big antipasto, roast chicken, osso bucco - all the regular stuff. It was cheap and cheerful. It progressed from there into something more elevated, albeit with restrictions because we’re underground and we don’t have a kitchen there. It’s really like a ‘pop up’ almost every day.

Initially, we thought we might write the menu on the wall but it was difficult to see the menu because of the configuration of the space. It was difficult to deliver a la carte because there was no kitchen. So, we decided to do a set banquet (five to six courses at the whim of the chef). It came from the lack of space and facilities. This idea of the set banquet was very familiar to me, because a lot of Italian trattorias and middle-sized restaurants do that. This was really how it started.

My interest was to highlight some of the local produce - the Murray cod, Murray perch, yabbies and local lamb on the protein side. On the vegetable side, the sky was the limit because traditionally everything has been grown here - the whole citrus family, grapes and most veggies. A lot of the time, things are grown here, sent to Melbourne and then sent back. I always had access to and familiarity with local growers so that I could turn up and get a box of this or that as I wished. Now, we actually have an independent distribution network for and by local people called ‘Out Of The Box’ - we’re trying to obviate the need to buy produce that has gone down 600km and been in cool rooms most of the time. That’s why regional areas are huge food bowls - they are in the vice of the commercial reality and it’s only when you find people that are willing to get in the car, on a bicycle or walk to a farmer and ask for the produce that you get it - otherwise you might as well go to the supermarket.

C&C: How interesting - so is this focus on making use of the surplus of regional produce part of the reason that the Stefano’s pasta sauces were created?

Stefano: Yes, it seemed to me that an advocate for a region should have a range of products to highlight what is here. 

C&C: How did you go about deciding on the flavours of the pasta sauces? Were they inspired by what people like to eat in the restaurant?

Stefano: It’s somewhat rare that we do a pasta sauce in the restaurant with a base of tomatoes, because the people who would pay a fairly high price would regard it as a bit ‘pedestrian’. So the restaurant does other sauces that are perhaps more in keeping with the price tag that people pay to go to the restaurant.

But then, the reality is that when you go to a supermarket and taste any of the tomato sauces there - they may be three or four dollars, but they’re absolutely shocking. Every newspaper, magazine, food show and what not talks about the passata. I hate to think about what goes into the passata, wherever it’s made.

So on the one hand, you can’t make a proper tomato sauce in a restaurant because it’s regarded as pedestrian - but then the same people go to the supermarket and buy the cheap tomato sauce. 

There was a gap in the market. My desire was to have a sauce that is genuine and authentic, in the sense that it was cooked properly and has good flavour. As it’s made with proper olive oil and everything else, you end up with fairly high costs. So you can’t beat the Italian, huge multinationals that can make endless amounts of sauce with machine harvested tomatoes and so on.

But in The Age’s Epicure, unbeknownst to us, they had collected about twenty pasta sauces and tested them - ours came out on top, which was pleasing and showed us that we were onto a good thing here.

C&C: What has the process of getting Stefano’s ‘on the shelf’ and into retailers been like? You mentioned fairly high costs, has it been a smooth process?

Stefano’s: We used to create the sauce in small pots, about twenty litre pots. It was extremely tiring, you’re nursing five pots at a time by hand and then you have to process the onions and tomatoes, sterilise, bottle, label, box it up, wrap it - all by hand. That became unsustainable and eventually we said we didn’t want to do it anymore.

I had to decide whether I was going to abandon the sauce altogether or find an alternative. Luckily for me, the manufacturer that we use in Tasmania is the brother in law of someone who lives here in Mildura and comes from a long line of chefs - in fact, his nephew is well-known chef Adrian Richardson. 

So, I decided to pay them a visit and see how they’re organised at their Island Harvest outfit - and it’s impeccable. They have these big vessels, but you can control them and you cook with steam, not with gas. The pots are governed by steam, which is a gentle way of cooking actually. You can do 120kg in one hit - then you put a pump in it and it goes straight to the bottling line and the stuff gets bottled really hot so that it’s immediately sterilised.

It’s set up so that in one day, you can do a couple of thousand jars. In sequence, you can do enough bottles to fill up a pallet or more. The cost of ingredients is still high and use of facilities still costs money, but it’s much easier. It’s marginally cheaper, more efficient and much easier to replicate. You still have to cook and taste, but once you have the proportions right  it can then be replicated with consistency. I go to Tasmania and I taste the sauce, so that I know it’s using the right amount of ingredients - it’s calculated, but I still want to taste because I’m hands on. 

C&C: If I was brand new to Stefano's, which product would you recommend that I try first?

Stefano: For beginners, so to speak, I’d start with the most simple - the plain tomato sauce. But remember, there are three critical ingredients in a pasta: good pasta, good sauce, and it’s never complete without cheese and fresh herbs. 

But please - don’t put pre-grated, so-called parmesan from the supermarket on the pasta, because you’re defeating the purpose. You’re paying a fair dollar for the pasta sauce, so go all the way and don’t flood the pasta with sauce. The pasta comes first - the sauce is an addition. You never say ‘I’m having a bowl of Amatriciana’, you say ‘I’m having a bowl of Pasta all’Amatriciana’. And the sauce without good cheese and herbs is a waste of time. 

That’s the first point. The second point is that if you want to start with a neutral sauce, I’ll let the customers in on a little secret. Most recipes tell you to add a can of tomatoes when you’re braising or making something. You will never have a good braised chicken or whatever you’re cooking by doing this - your resulting sauce will always have a yellow, watery rim on the plate. You should always braise with a pre-made tomato sauce - then you get the flavour. Don’t ever put canned tomatoes into the sauce. Nobody tells you that, but that’s our secret for our customers!

C&C: What do you envision for the future of Stefano’s?

Well, I’m turning 70 this year, which would make thirty four years in the restaurant - do you think I’m entitled to retire? I’d love to do things like visit my daughter in Amsterdam where she lives with my new little granddaughter. 

But there’ll also be more time to go and visit some retailers, do some cooking demos and talk about some of the things we’ve been talking about - because punters don’t get to hear from the owner of the product very often. You can’t run a restaurant and also run around the country - it’s one or the other. So one door shuts, and another opens. 

I’d love to get some testimonials from people and go to retailers that order our sauces - Wild Things in North Fitzroy, for example. I wouldn’t mind placing an ad in The Saturday Paper - it’s a very Melbourne thing. For the future, I would like people to appreciate the sauces, learn how to use them and to get to meet the people personally. 

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