For more than two decades, Giovanni Pilu has brought the food of Sardinia to Sydney's Northern Beaches. At Pilu at Freshwater, he has built a restaurant around the cooking of his homeland while continually finding new ways to develop its traditional dishes
For Giovanni Pilu, respecting tradition doesn't mean cooking the same dishes in exactly the same way they were prepared generations ago.
At Pilu at Freshwater, the Sardinian-born chef has spent 22 years refining the recipes he grew up with, adapting them to Australian produce and developing the techniques behind some of the restaurant's best-known dishes.
"Don't get offended. I'm not changing it, but I'm making it better," he says.
It's an approach that runs through the restaurant, from its Sardinian culurgiones to the suckling pig that has been on the menu since opening.
Bringing Sardinia to Freshwater
Giovanni arrived in Australia in 1992 and opened his first restaurant, Cala Luna, at The Spit in Mosman in 1997.
At a time when Italian food was often presented as a single cuisine, he began introducing Sydney diners to the ingredients and cooking traditions of Sardinia.
For Giovanni, the regional distinctions have always mattered.
Italy's 20 regions have their own ingredients, techniques and food traditions, and the cooking of Sardinia reflects the island's particular history and geography.
In 2004, Giovanni and his wife Marilyn opened Pilu at Freshwater, giving him an opportunity to develop that identity further.
The location immediately felt familiar. The beach, water and coastal setting reminded him of home, while the surrounding village offered the sense of community he had grown up with.
Over the years, regular customers have become familiar faces, with Giovanni describing the relationships formed at the restaurant as almost an extension of family.
Understanding Sardinian food
Although Sardinia is surrounded by the Mediterranean, Giovanni explains that the traditional food he grew up with was not dominated by seafood.
He points to the island's history of coastal invasions, which drove communities into the hills and mountains.
Away from the coast, the diet was largely built around meat, cheese, pasta and bread.
It was simple, humble cooking, shaped by what was available rather than elaborate ingredients or techniques.
Those traditions remain central to Pilu, but Giovanni has never believed they should restrict what a Sardinian restaurant can serve.
His approach is to start with the foundations of a dish and develop it using the ingredients and techniques available today.
The restaurant's tonno alla Carlofortina is one example.
The tuna dish brings together pine nuts, basil mayonnaise, Parmigiano Reggiano and tomato gazpacho, with Giovanni demonstrating how the ingredients are prepared and assembled in the film.
It's a dish that has evolved through the years, reflecting his willingness to adapt traditional flavours rather than follow a fixed recipe.
The evolution of Pilu's signature dishes
Few dishes better illustrate Giovanni's approach than the culurgiones and suckling pig that have become fixtures of the restaurant.
Culurgiones are a traditional Sardinian filled pasta, sealed in a distinctive shape resembling an ear of wheat.
At Pilu, they are among the restaurant's most popular pasta dishes, with Giovanni estimating that the kitchen produces around 20,000 each year.
In the film, he demonstrates how the pasta is plated and finished, showing the attention to detail behind one of the restaurant's best-known dishes.
The suckling pig has an even longer history at the restaurant.
It has been on the menu since Pilu opened, although its preparation has changed considerably over the years.
Traditionally in Sardinia, suckling pig would be roasted, chopped on the bone and served on cork with little more than raw vegetables.
That was also how Giovanni originally presented the dish.
Over time, the kitchen developed a more refined preparation, eventually moving towards completely deboning the pig before serving it.
The accompaniments have evolved too.
Rather than serving the pork with raw vegetables alone, the dish now incorporates braised cabbage flavoured with mirto, a traditional Sardinian liqueur, alongside other elements including a sauce made by reducing stock from the pork bones.
The result is a dish that remains recognisably Sardinian while reflecting more than two decades of changes in the kitchen.
For Giovanni, improving a traditional recipe isn't about dismissing the original. It's about understanding it well enough to know where it can be developed.
Keeping the traditions alive
"We took Sardinian cuisine from being really traditional, really basic to slowly modernise it, lighten it a bit," Giovanni explains.
That evolution has happened gradually, with the restaurant continuing to develop while retaining its Sardinian identity.
He believes the same principle applies more broadly to Italian cooking.
Traditional recipes provide the foundations, but chefs should be able to refine and reinterpret them without losing their connection to the past.
"It's not about forgetting the traditional recipes," he says.
For Giovanni, keeping those dishes alive means continuing to cook them, share them and allow them to evolve.
A restaurant built around people
Freshwater has changed considerably since Giovanni first arrived.
The quiet village he remembers is now a busy dining destination, with more cafés, restaurants and people bringing life to the area.
It's a change Giovanni welcomes, and he speaks warmly about the possibility of one day retiring in the place he has called home for so long.
But despite the recognition he has received throughout his career, he is quick to point out that Pilu has never been about one person.
The restaurant's success belongs to the people working alongside him, both in the kitchen and across the wider business.
"It's my face. I'm talking. But without everyone there and everyone here, what am I going to do by myself?"
More than two decades after opening, Pilu remains closely connected to both Giovanni's Sardinian heritage and the community he has built around him in Freshwater.
For Giovanni, opening a Sardinian restaurant overlooking the beach was, as he describes it, "a dream come true".
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