70 years of food, family & hospitality

My family has been in the business of feeding people since before my father was born. Restaurants have been an integral part of my life from the time I started to understand the world around me.

I am so pleased to be building upon and continuing our family tradition up here in Noosa while getting to know the local community.

My grandparents & great aunt and uncle opened Capannina Ciccio in 1951, it was a little shack on the beach in Northern Italy that served the local catch to the townspeople. The restaurant is still there and after multiple expansions is being run by the 3rd & 4th generation of the family. It remains a popular place to this day for the local community and visitors alike.

My father, Lucio, was born into that family restaurant. Love, for my mother, pulled him away and he ended up in Sydney with his own eponymous institution. Lucio’s, when it first opened, was the darling of the local Paddington community and it grew into one of Sydney’s longest running & most successful restaurants. Through these changes we never lost sight of that guiding principle of creating a welcoming space for friends and families to share happy times around the table - as my father likes to say.

The family made the decision to close Lucio’s in Paddington earlier this year. The certainty of that decision opened up possibilities my wife and I never thought possible. My wife, Dieuwke, and I first met when she was a chef at Lucio’s, just arrived from the Netherlands via Paris. Once the closure was decided we saw an opportunity leave Sydney. We wanted to find a place out of the city to raise our growing family but equally important a place with a thriving food community where we could continue the family tradition of great food & hospitality. We spent a year living, working, travelling & searching for places that could provide all of these things. Noosa increasingly seemed to have it all. When we found a fantastic site at the Noosa Marina that settled it.

My sister, Michela, has been drawn away from Sydney as well and now the next chapter of the family history begins with:

Lucio’s Marina

Dieuwke, Michela and I look forward to welcoming you there soon.

- Matteo