Dario Di Clerico

Conversation with a chef: Hi Dario, Nice to meet you. So tell me, are these the classic cannoli?

Dario Di Clerico: That’s right. That’s the Sicilian cannoli: ricotta, cinnamon sugar. That’s where everything started. That was the first one we did with Giorgio, from That’s Amore Cheese, he said, “Ah, this is what my mum would make and everything started.

I was reading that some people use mascarpone, but the traditional way is with ricotta? 

Yes. Mascarpone makes something very smooth. It’s a cheese that’s very smooth. Ricotta tends to be sometimes grainy. You have some lumps in your mouth, so that’s why traditionally they sieve it. Instead, we’re lucky because That’s Amore ricotta is very is very thin, it’s not hard, even the traditional one is nice and soft. So you just have to whip it to get a really good result. 

It does look very smooth. I love your logo: Stay crunchy. So, the pastry shell has to be crunchy?

Yes. The pastry shell has to be crunchy. The most disappointing thing is if you buy a cannolo and it’s soft. Or when you buy it and they have been sitting on display, and there is chocolate around it. That means they have been filled for a while. We do have the chocolate lining as well, but we fill it up fresh in front of you. If you say to me, I need the cannoli for tomorrow, but I can’t come tomorrow, we offer the cannoli kit and you fill it up yourself. Otherwise, if someone says, look, it’s not really something I want to do or I don’t have the facilities, I just can’t be bothered, we fill it up with the cannoli lined in chocolate. The chocolate is the protection to the shell. But yes, you should have crunchy cannoli. If you see our displays, there is always just a few cannoli. There are two big schools, one that says, fill it up on the spot. That’s great, fantastic, but for the numbers that we do and for the places where we are, that never works. That’s the way we started, filling to order. But imagine Chadstone, or South Melbourne Market. People start to line up, if they want a dozen, six or seven different flavours it takes way too long. We have a system where we constantly fill up cannoli, but they’ve been sitting there half an hour, one hour max. That’s the perfect way to eat them. It’s not too crunchy, but still crunchy, but it’s quick. Our thing is the service. Service has to be quick. 

Speaking of flavours, I read somewhere that you’ve got 20 flavours? Or is it ever evolving? Can you put anything in a cannoli? Or a cannolo? I just learned that’s the singular version.

All year round, we have a flavour of the week. We have a couple of flavours, probably two or three flavours that will repeat. Everything else is always a new flavour. We have at least 50 flavours and some of them, we drop. We do something new, we push a little bit, and sometimes it doesn’t work, or people don’t like it. Sometimes I think, oh, this will taste fantastic. A few weeks ago we did a star anise, and pear. I love Star anise. I thought it was fantastic. People just didn’t like it. It depends on the perception of the. But every week we have a new flavour. We have some staples, the Sicilian, that’s the cinnamon one, we have chocolate, we have citrus, which is limoncello or blood orange, lime, or just the orange with poppy. And then we have the Tiramisu with a freeze-dried coffee. So it has a beautiful coffee flavour but it’s not grainy in your mouth. And then we have flavours of the week. 

I saw you did a Filipino inspired kalamansi one. And then a cookies and cream one, which looked amazing. 

A few years ago for Australia Day, we did Vegemite and Parmesan. It worked extremely well. The way I see it with the Cannoleria as well as the Burrata bar, every dish will have a creamy part, let’s say your classic vegemite toast, my kids love it with butter. So, the toast is your cannolo, the crunchy part, then they put the butter then vegemite. The ricotta is the fat part, and then you put the vegemite. When they feel a bit more fancy, they grate some cheese on there, so what we did, we made some parmesan chips. Put them in the oven, nice and dry, nice and crispy, and we garnished it like that. Italians hated it, but to me, the beauty to what we do is that we are in Australia and the way I see it, I’m not bound by tradition because I’m not Sicilian. I’m Italian, my grandmother was Sicilian, but I grew up in Abruzzo. So I don’t have the tradition, it limits you. For me, I take a very chef view of the cannoli. What else can we do? In the end, it’s a crunchy shell and a soft filling. Even a taco is something with a crunchy shell and a soft filling. I’m sure in any cuisine there is something that has a crunchy shell and a soft filling. Why can’t that become a cannolo? 

Cooking is my first passion. I’ve been doing it since I was 14. If I could, that’s all I would do. Then, of course, the business is growing, you can’t be just cooking. We have a few cannoli shops, we have the Burrata Bar, we have a café, and all the other bits and pieces that we do. But, it’s l a lost love. I always try to go back there. I love it. I guess out of all the things I do, I’m best at cooking. 

Dario Di Clerico, Cannoleria

It’s interesting that you’ve got that chef approach because obviously you did train to be a chef. I see all the things you’re doing now. You’re so entrepreneurial. Are you still on the pans? Do you still cook? 

Yeah. I still love to go to the Burrata Bar every weekend. We do a lot of pop ups where I like to be involved. We do private dinners, I like to be involved. Cooking is my first passion. I’ve been doing it since I was 14. If I could, that’s all I would do. Then, of course, the business is growing, you can’t be just cooking. We have a few cannoli shops, we have the Burrata Bar, we have a café, and all the other bits and pieces that we do. But, it’s l a lost love. I always try to go back there. I love it. I guess out of all the things I do, I’m best at cooking. 

 You started when you were 14. What was happening when you were 14? 

I didn’t have a great childhood. I lost my mom. I was 14. I’ve always been a big boy, I’ve never been great with people, so serving the tables wasn’t option for me. I started to clean the pots back then when there was money in hospitality in Italy, there was a dishwasher and there was a pot washer. The pot washer stayed in the kitchen and cleaned all the pots and pans for the chefs and then I started to clean the fish. I was 14, 15, and it was during the summer, because in summer we have three months of break in Italy. I would go there, clean all the fish, they taught me how to clean the mussels. They would have these calamari that were like a finger size. So I clean all the calamari. That’s the job I would do until two or three o’clock in the afternoon. I’d go there probably 8 a.m. The fish will still moving. That’s how fresh it was. And then slowly, one day, someone wouldn’t turn up, so someone would say, oh, I’ll teach you how to do this. And that’s honestly how they started. And then I went to culinary school. It was good because I didn’t have to study a lot. I have always worked Friday, Saturday, Sunday, for as long as I remember. I finished school mid-May, to start to work until the end of September. In Italy, there is a law that you have to do enough days at school, you lose a year if you don’t do a minimum required days. So let’s say in a year of school, you have to do at least 100 days. At the beginning of the year, I would ask the teachers how many days I had to do this year, because I had to work. I wish I had a cooler story. 

We grew up in the country, so everything was around food, around the seasons. We would raise our own pigs, raise our own chickens, pick tomatoes, go foraging for mushrooms. In every season, there is something to do, you and so I always grew up with that and that’s what I apply to everything that we do, even at the Burrata Bar. We change the menu every three months. Honestly, at a little stand at the South Melbourne Market, it’s unheard of to change the menu four times a year. But to me, why would you use tomato when it’s not the tomato season? It’s against my beliefs. 

I read too that you that these are not made with lard. 

No, the shells themselves, they are actually vegan. That gives us a much longer shelf life. And again, we are in Australia. There are a lot of people that don’t eat pork. There are a lot of people who are vegetarian. To me, cannoli is a vehicle, to get people closer to our Italian heritage, to our Italian tradition. That’s why we do cooking classes as well. When we do the cooking classes, people don’t care about how technical I am or how good I am. I’ll give you all the tips to redo these at home without spending a lot of money. You don’t need a pasta machine; you don’t need a fancy cookie cutter. Most of the tools that we use, we actually to Kmart specifically to buy from Kmart, because I say, if you need it, you can go to Kmart and spend two bucks, because if you have to pay for a proper cutter, that comes from Sicily, it’s going to cost you $200. Would you every make it? No. This is the approach with everything that we do. Cannoleria, I feel is one of those brands where we’re relatively young. We started in 2018, but I like to think that when people think about cannoli, they think about Cannoleria, that we make the best cannoli. We have multiple shops. So we definitely like to think that we are the most consistent. We like to think that if you come here to Carlton, or if you go to South Melbourne, you get the same cannoli. But it’s not about a mama and papa operation where I would be there sitting, making the shells. 

I went to work at the Grand Hotel in Richmond, where Valerio Nucci and Leonardo Gelsomino were head chefs. I think the way they looked at Italian food was so different. I think they were more attached to the tradition than chefs were back in Italy. Leonardo owns Lello pasta now. Then together we opened The Yak Bar together, I was the chef, in the city. We were actually talking yesterday. It’s a shame that he doesn’t have a restaurant anymore because we used to love it. His passion to make the vincisgrassi. Of course, he was taught by Valerio. It was incredible. I think they really took me back to the root because I probably I was still thinking about doing modern Italian and trying mix it up. Instead, they really taught me how to do things the old school way. I think Leo is one of the people who most influenced my pasta skills and cuisine as a whole. 

Dario Di Clerico, Cannoleria

Just to go back to the start of it all again. I got sidetracked. You started doing that as a job, because you needed to work, can you remember when it switched into that love that you spoke about? 

What I love about the kitchen more than anything else is the team. To be there at 14 years old, you want the hierarchy. You want to listen to someone, you want to learn. What I love the most about cooking is you can take something so simple and make it become something completely different and you the result is then and there. In business now, if everything goes well in six months, we see the results. With cooking, you make something and you eat it straight away, it’s there, and brings people together. This is what I love about it the most. 

You went and worked in London. When did you decide that you needed to do that as the next step? 

I guess straight away. My idea was always to leave. I come from a small village. I guess it’s just normal that when you are 18, you want to leave. I did. As soon I had the chance, I finished school, because in Italy it is. still important to say you have your diploma, I did that to make my dad happy. And then I left as soon as I could. I had a friend who lived in London and worked at the Cleveland Hotel. It was a five-star luxe hotel 40, minutes north of London, still there, a beautiful place. The beauty of it was that it was a hotel. They will give you the room where you can stay, they will teach you English which was part of the deal every day off. They would give us days off on the day that there was an English teacher there. You weren’t just with Italians. This friend of mine had a broader view, he was a little bit older than me. He said, if you come here, it’s easy because you don’t have to look for a house, you don’t have to share accommodation, but they teach you English, you see more than just Italian cuisine, you can see a bit more of international cuisine. That’s what I did. I was lucky enough that, I couldn’t speak a word of English, so I started in the club kitchen, making sandwiches, the pasta, all the room orders. Then I went to the main kitchen, from the main kitchen, became chef de partie, and then from there, there was an opening, and they had a small Michelin star restaurant, one Michelin star, and the chef was Robert Thompson, he was the youngest chef in England back then to be awarded with a Michelin star. That was another thing altogether, working in such a small brigade. I was the only Italian, it was him, his wife, his best friend, so imagine I just couldn’t fit in there. But fair enough, they taught me a different style of cuisine and there are some things that I still do today that he taught me back then. I guess the biggest issue with England, at least for me, it was very hard to integrate with the culture and with everything else. My cooking teacher took a year off from school, to come here, because she had a cousin here. She told me Australia is a great place, very, very green, I think you can do very well there. Just come and try. Literally that’s what I did. I was 21. 

When was that?

2010. 

And here you are. When you first arrived here, what was your impression?

I started working and I never stopped from that day. 

In Italian restaurants initially?

Yes. But I was very lucky that I was with an Abbruzzese family, the Battista family. They had a restaurant, and they took me in as a son. I had Christmas with them and everything that you do with your family. They had a restaurant down in Edithvale, the beach side. But they couldn’t sponsor me, so I had to find a quick solution and I went to work at the Grand Hotel in Richmond, where Valerio Nucci and Leonardo Gelsomino were head chefs. I think the way they looked at Italian food was so different. I think they were more attached to the tradition than chefs were back in Italy. Leonardo owns Lello pasta now. Then together we opened The Yak Bar together, I was the chef, in the city. We were actually talking yesterday. It’s a shame that he doesn’t have a restaurant anymore because we used to love it. His passion to make the vincisgrassi. Of course, he was taught by Valerio. It was incredible. I think they really took me back to the root because I probably I was still thinking about doing modern Italian and trying mix it up. Instead, they really taught me how to do things the old school way. I think Leo is one of the people who most influenced my pasta skills and cuisine as a whole. 

At what point did you think it was time to go out on your own and enter the world of business? 

Well, being an Abbruzzese, we do these amazing lamb skewers. They call arrosticini. That was first thing that I wanted to do. Then to be able to do events and pop-ups and things like that, I had to be out to the kitchen, and so I resigned from working with Leo, to have more of a Monday to Friday job and then I could do something extra on the side. And that’s what I did. I worked for an ice cream company. I did ice cream back in Italy, so I was doing industrial style ice cream. But it’s funny how then all the things that I learned there to do things industrially or on a larger scale it helped when we opened Cannoleria. I was doing events, I was doing pop ups, I was doing weddings and birthdays. That’s where I did few things with Giorgio for That’s Amore when they opened the new factory in Thomastown. I did the breakup party? I did a christening for a daughter. I knew of him because I always used his cheese in every kitchen. I would see him, back then was still doing deliveries and it’s funny, I met him, I think the first of the second week I arrived in Australia, and he was doing deliveries and he told me, oh, you just arrived. I say, yeah, I just arrived. He said, if you work hard in Australia, you can do whatever you like. Then probably six, seven years later, when he opened the deli in Thomastown, that’s where he said, well, I love your porchetta, I think a porchetta roll could be something that people would like around here; there a lot of tradies, and beautiful porchetta roll will go well. That’s how I start to work with That’s Amore. 

Is he still involved with this business?

He’s still involved. Cannoleria wouldn’t be really where it is if it wasn’t for him, because he allowed me to use every space that I could, every van, every truck, every forklift. That’s how we could grow so quickly, because he already had all the back of house and for me, I was lucky that I had all that because then I could work hard to build everything else. And that’s all I did. To me, no matter how lucky, how skilled, you are, if you don’t work hard, you’re not going to do anything. 

That’s good advice. I usually finish with asking, what would your advice be for a young person starting out as a chef? Work hard. 

That’s what it is. These days, there is always this dream to become rich or to accomplish something through the phone, things like this, but they don’t understand how much work there is behind it all. Things don’t just happen overnight. I love that saying that says, it takes ten years to become an overnight success, but you have to work those ten years daily and really push to make it happen. 

Do you think when you get to your stage, do you have to keep that muscle memory up by still doing? Do you still read cookbooks or watch what other people are doing or how do you keep it alive for yourself? 

For me, I love reading, I love seeing other people cooking. I’m not too concerned what other people do, in the way of wanting to do the same thing, but it’s more like, I love to see what other chefs are up to, eating in places, what’s the new trend and decide, do we hop on this trend or not? In the end trends come and go. At Cannoleria, I believe we are lucky because we have such a traditional product, even if we hop on a trend, the base is there and it is strong. Same thing with the Burrata Bar. We will make a dish with Burrata. Yes, we pus the boundaries, we put fruit and I always love that in the first menu, we did mortadella, watermelon, and we pickled the rind just to give it a crunchiness and we put that with the burrata. It was so funny, we put the picture on Instagram, and an Italian posted underneath the picture, “After the pizza with pineapple, now the mortadella with the watermelon.” It was so funny because it’s true. We are pushing boundaries. That’s the approach we have with everything I do. 

Cannoleria, 344 Lygon Street, Carlton & 322 Coventry Street, South Melbourne