Federico Zanellato talks constantly – a running commentary on provenance, the hospitality industry at large, expansion plans and the daily tribulations of a successful, restless restaurateur. After LuMi, his award-winning Italian restaurant in Sydney, he helped build a frozen yogurt atelier, a chain of bakeries and a pizzeria that were meant to run themselves. Instead, he runs between them. For now, he’s handling it just fine.
We’re crossing Sydney’s Pyrmont Bridge. The Australian flag crackles in the wind, dark blue against the pure spring sky. Behind us is LuMi, where we’ve just had lunch.
LuMi is Federico’s first restaurant. He opened it in 2014 on Wharf 10 in Pyrmont and named it after his twin daughters, Luna and Mia. Lumi is also Italian for small lights like the ones spread across the ceiling of the dining room – which light the room every night. Gambero Rosso once named LuMi the best Italian restaurant outside Italy.
The cuisine is Italian, made with Australian ingredients (about 90 percent, he estimates) and full of Japanese precision – which he learned in a year with Seiji Yamamoto at RyuGin in Tokyo.
The Greatest Hits
Lunch was the greatest hits from the current omakase menu. Federico, modestly, called it “a little bit of snacking.” On one side, the sunlight bounced around the harbor. On the other side, the open kitchen was edgy and energetic – Federico lifting tangles of tagliolini with tongs before twisting them into nests in the bowls while cajoling the team through another busy service.
There were Sydney rock oysters from Merimbula on the Sapphire Coast, cold and briny. The warm gougères that came next had a crisp shell, a chewy middle and Comté oozing out of them. Sourdough toast followed, with an abalone emulsion and slices of baby tiger abalone from Victoria. Blackmore wagyu tartare came soft and rich on a shattering potato millefeuille, with beef tallow, foie gras cream and caviar. Then came the pasta – silky tagliolini in a bright orange seafood ragu of toothfish, snapper belly and sweet hand-picked marron, with a glass of Zi bi Bò, a dry, floral Zibibbo from Valdibella in Sicily, to go with it.
Now Federico is striding across the timber-planked decking. LuMi seats 45 a service, four nights a week, and he calls it a niche place with an expiration date. “It requires my presence, my attention, my control,” he says. Freo, where we’re headed, is part of a concerted effort to build a group of businesses that reach different audiences. They were meant to let him go “a bit on autopilot.”
Never Stopping
When we finally catch up with Federico, he’s already warmly greeting the staff at the flagship Freo store in Darling Square. It doesn’t look like a frozen yogurt shop. They call it a ‘frozen atelier,’ and the room justifies the name – purple and burgundy, with timber, glass and marble, curtains and Venetian blinds.
“The product is premium, the machine is premium,” he explains, breaking off from checking in with the team. “We wanted to invest in the finishes too, so you feel everything is aligned with the quality of the product.”
Like Federico, always on the move, the machines never stop churning. Customers grab their own cups, pull the lever on frozen yogurt, express gelato or dairy-free chocolate, pile on toppings and put them all on the scale. Even the flavor names read like a chef’s menu, with provenance, seasoning and pairing built in – lychee and rose, Rindo matcha, Sicilian pistachio and sea salt. One person works the floor, handing out tastes and showing first-timers how it works.
It’s a hot afternoon by now and the crowd filling the tables outside is mostly in their twenties. Strawberry is their bestseller – Japanese strawberry. Federico nods at the tables. “Look at the demographic,” he says. They also love the jasmine milk, the Thai milk tea and the matcha. He doesn’t. He likes the classics.
Federico’s pick is the pistachio. “Always pistachio,” he smiles, dispensing a bowlful for himself. He has, he admits, a sweet tooth, “but I wouldn’t eat it if it wasn’t good – I don’t eat other frozen yogurt,” he adds, gently disparaging the opposition.
Figuring Things Out
Freo became four stores in two years, with about a hundred staff. Federico owns it with partners. “It’s not easy, but it is scalable,” he adds. A central kitchen makes everything and the customers serve themselves. “Once you get the product out, the shop runs by itself.”
Right now, he can’t stop talking about the yogurt. The base is 60 percent pot-set yogurt from a small farm an hour south of Sydney, with no hormones and no antibiotics. The sugar is 13 percent. Classic gelato is as high as 18 to 22. The machines are Carpigiani, made in Bologna, “which is like driving a Ferrari to make soft serve.”
Express gelato comes out at minus seven degrees Celsius with 10 to 15 percent air. Scooped gelato has 25 to 30 percent and American ice cream about 70. “We sell by the weight, so we don’t want air.”
Then there’s the fresh yogurt, which he says has four days once it leaves the pasteurizer. That works in Sydney. It won’t work for Melbourne, Brisbane or Southeast Asia, where he’d like to go next. “But when the time comes, we’ll figure it out.”
And then he’s off again. He opens his phone and unlocks one of the Lime bikes outside to ride back to LuMi. “Don’t eat too much tonight,” he says. “Tomorrow we’ll do a big brunch.”
Getting Out Of The Comfort Zone
Brunch is at Lode Pies & Pastries in Rozelle, one of five Lode bakeries Federico owns independently. It’s Sunday morning, and unlike yesterday it’s cold and drizzly, and everyone has come inside. All 60 seats are full, with a long line leading in from the door to the counter. Croissants are lined up in rows on timber slats, beside pies, cheese-topped rolls and baguettes wrapped in Lode-print paper, and sourdough loaves are stacked on the shelves behind.
It’s so busy we set up a makeshift table beside the ovens, still warm from the early morning bake, to try the pastries and the pies. Sitting beside them is soothing, like a fire on a winter’s day.
The night before, we ate at Regina, the pizzeria in Redfern’s Wunderlich Lane that Federico’s wife, Michela, runs with pizzaiolo Matteo Ernandes. Federico wasn’t there. Before the pastries arrive, he wants to know how it was. The fried pizza was the standout.
“Everything started with the pies,” he says. He had to learn it all from scratch. “I wanted to get out of my comfort zone. To make pastries and pies, I had to study and dedicate a lot of time, and I made many mistakes. It was a challenge.”
He’s done this before. He grew up in Padua and refused to join the family clothing factory, “a bit out of spite, a bit out of revenge.” At 18 he went to the Ritz in London. At 22 he tried Sydney on a tourist visa, leaving the country every three months, and nobody would hire him. So he went home to cook with Heinz Beck at La Pergola in Rome, then on to Tokyo. In 2010 he came back to run the kitchen at Ormeggio, and LuMi followed four years later. “I always tell the guys: the only way to learn is by making mistakes.”
For its first four years, Lode only sold pies and pastries. Breakfast started a year ago, and only at Rozelle because it has a kitchen. The pies are all puff pastry, with no shortcrust base. Lode makes 1,500 to 1,600 a week across its five shops, all shaped by hand, including a Bolognese and a wagyu beef shank.
Federico’s own pick is the plain croissant. “I like to dip it in the coffee.”
The croissants depend on butter he can’t get here. “It’s not about the butter,” Federico says. “You need to get the milk right.”
The same perfectionism runs through everything on the table. The ocean trout is Tasmanian and cured in-house for 14 hours. The chili oil on the scrambled eggs is made in the kitchen. And the French omelet – a pale-yellow parcel, smooth and unbrowned, with cheese oozing from the seam – follows David Kinch’s technique, which Federico found on YouTube. He folds it first and never flips it.
The coffee is bespoke too. Lode switched roasters when its first partner wouldn’t co-brand and make a custom blend. Little Marionette, 10 minutes away, would. It’s mostly Colombian, balanced with Ethiopian and Papua New Guinean beans.
The Price Of Obsession
The obsession has a price. Labor takes 52 percent of Lode’s revenue, and five years in, it barely breaks even. The answer, he reckons, is more machines – a custom oven loader on order from Italy and, one day, one for the pies.
It’s also been a bad week. The pie freezer broke down, so on Friday he hired a freezer truck. His production manager has resigned. Last night his restaurant manager cut his hand on a paring knife and ended up in the hospital at 1 a.m. “What else can happen today?” he wonders aloud.
He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Now I need to go and do lunch service,” he says. LuMi is on his mind. “I’m already thinking about what I’m gonna do when I arrive.”
Whatever else does happen today, he’ll find out and handle it. Autopilot is still on hold.
