In 2013 I moved from Milan to work as a pastry chef in Marano Vicentino, a tiny town in the region of Veneto. My new boss was the youngest chef to be awarded a Michelin star in Italy and I was excited by the opportunity to work at El Coq, living in the staff sharehouse and learning everything I could.
I’d been there a year when Oskar arrived on the scene. A fellow chef and friend of my boss, he had been working on a boat somewhere and was going to stay with us in the sharehouse for a few weeks and spend some time in the kitchen helping us develop the menu.
The first day we met he had lunch and dinner at the restaurant. I barely remember looking at him as I was brought table side to explain my desserts, I only remember being confused by his blue eyes and fair skin – I thought my boss had said he was from Tanzania, I’d never even heard of Tasmania.
But afterwork drinks lead to a marathon google translate session back at the house and by 4am we were kissing at the kitchen table. I thought, what is two weeks? He’ll be gone soon and we fell easily into what I thought would be a brief love affair.
As his time in Marano came to an end we said our farewells and to be honest I was kind of relieved – I wasn’t interested in anything serious, I was razor focused on my career. But during service that night the electric sliding doors of the kitchen opened just at the moment he walked into the dining room from the snowy night outside. Behind me was the chaos of the kitchen with open fires blazing and he was there coming in from the cold in a huge puffer jacket. It was kind of like a movie. But I was in the middle of a shift and I only dared look at him for a moment, just long enough to be surprised by how happy I was to see him. Then he was gone.
The rest of the night I was a nervous wreck, what was he doing back here? I didn’t think I was ready to take things any further but at the end of my shift as I opened my car door to leave he appeared and asked me cheekily if I could give him a lift back to the staff house. Of course I didn’t hesitate and two weeks later we had moved into a tiny apartment together with no hot water. It wasn’t long before we were planning our future restaurant – still via google translate.
We didn’t speak the same language but somehow we understood each other so well. In the kitchen the synergy was just amazing, off the clock the chemistry was like nothing I had experienced, even with people I could communicate with in my own tongue. He is such an easy person to be around, we were always laughing, always creating, always dreaming and scheming together.
Three months later we headed for Tasmania. I had a working holiday visa for one year; our plan was to save money and return and open a restaurant in Italy, but we ran some pop ups in Hobart and quickly people were loving what we were doing. After some time back in Italy and some visa hurdles later we opened Fico in 2016. Five years later we were married and in 2024 our second venue, Pitzi, was born.
It probably took five years before I became fluent in English. During that time we grew so much as a couple and as business partners and the relationship evolved from a fantasy to something much more adult. With our new understanding came more nuance, and of course more friction too. But our connection, it turned out, had never been lost in translation.
Sometimes I tell the story of how we came to be here – married and running businesses in a place I didn’t even know existed – and hardly believe it happened. It seems crazy to meet someone and start a whole life via google translate, but here we are.
Federica Andrisani and Oskar Rossi are executive chefs and co-owners of Fico and Pitzi, both in Hobart.
