He moved to Tuscany to attend university when he was 19 years old.

“I came to Florence in 1982, straight after high school, to study architecture,” Cofano said in an interview with Rete Italia.

“Like many students, I worked in a restaurant to support myself.”

On December 8, 1992, Cofano opened L’Ostaria dei Centopoveri in via Palazzuolo, a stone’s throw from Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

“The people of Florence loved our tasty and original Mediterranean cuisine,” Cofano said.

In October 1996, he met Bruna, an Italo-Australian girl from Melbourne, who had just finished her Literature degree.

Bruna had come to Florence for a working holiday and to improve her Italian.

“She began to collaborate with me in the restaurant – with her in the dining room and me in the kitchen,” Cofano said.

“She was fabulous with the customers, even though she had never worked in hospitality before, and her people skills only added to Ostaria’s popularity.”

Cofano and Bruna married in 2001, in Melbourne, and their first daughter, Sofia, was born in Florence, in 2004.

When the couple’s eldest daughter was born, Cofano began to re-examine his lifestyle, which involved long, tiring hours in the kitchen.

In 2007, the couple decided to move to Australia in order to be closer to Bruna’s family, and to have help in raising their children.

They migrated to Melbourne in 2009, and Cofano began working in several restaurants.

Even though he promised his wife that they wouldn’t open another restaurant, Cofano and a group of partners opened a pizzeria in Melbourne’s CBD, which was an immediate success.

Cofano retired from this venture after the birth of his son, Matteo, so that he could spend more time with his family.

Unable to resist the siren call of the hospitality industry, Cofano and Bruna then opened ‘Tacco & Tosca’ in 2015, a restaurant and pizzeria that honours Cofano’s Apulian heritage and his love for Tuscany.

Chef and member of the Federazione Italian Cuochi (F.I.C), Donato Cofano

“The menu is full of dishes from both regions,” Cofano said.

“There are traditional seafood and vegetable dishes, with cime di rapa, along with the typically Tuscan cured meats I make with my friends.”

The ‘Tacco & Tosca’ menu offers surprises such as San Daniele prosciutto with squacquerone cheese and coccoli (a type of fried dough from Tuscany), cavatelli with artichokes and squid, and pappardelle alla chiantigiana– pasta with a meat and Chianti wine sauce.

The standout pizza flavours include the ‘Tacco’, which is made with prosciutto, cherry tomatoes, rocket and parmesan, and the ‘Tosca’, made with sausage, porcini mushrooms and thyme.

The ‘Barivecchia’ pizza with prawns, broccoli and crispy breadcrumbs is (sure to be) a crowd-favourite, as is the ‘Ponte Vecchio’, which is made with truffle cream, mushrooms, radicchio and parmesan.

In June, in between lockdowns, Cofano and Bruna opened ‘Focacceria Pugliese’ in South Melbourne, where they will prepare the classic Apulian foccacias, fresh pasta dishes, and their famous grilled octopus sandwich, when they reopen in November.

“We served the sandwich in the focacceria when we first opened, and we intended to do it two or three times a week, but we should have it on the menu permanently, because we literally sold out every time,” Cofano said.