Huizhi Ren and Gina Ottaway with a bowl of pasta. Photo: Kellie O’Brien.
As a young boy, Huizhi Ren would watch his grandmother make bread, pasta and egg noodles without ever reaching for a recipe.
She taught him that good food should be fresh, simple, made with love and, importantly, bring the family together.
Decades later, that’s the philosophy behind his latest Warrawong restaurant, Sano Kitchen, which combines the convenience of takeaway with restaurant-quality Italian food, from handmade pasta and pizza to arancini, panini and its crowd-catching cheese wheel pasta.
Mr Ren and his co-owner Ryan Zheng have already built a stable of Illawarra restaurants under the Il Lago brand, including The Links, Mt Warrigal, Albion Park and Illawarra Steelers Club.
Now, the pair have teamed up with 2018 MasterChef contestant Gina Ottaway, affectionately known as Nonna Gina, who shares his belief that busy lives shouldn’t mean losing the tradition of sitting around the table sharing good food.
“Since I was a little boy, I was always around my grandma in the morning when she was cooking fresh bread, making pasta or egg noodles,” Mr Ren said.
“But she never had a recipe. She always grabbed this one, and then grabbed that one.
“She always told us that good food is not complicated, and it is always simple and fresh, and made with a lot of love.
“We wanted to make a takeaway with restaurant-quality food. The younger generation are always busy but in spite of that we still can sit down with mum, dad, grandma or granddad on the weekend and enjoy dinner time.”
Nonna Gina agreed.
“Life has become so busy, and it’s gone away from that Sunday cooking, that Sunday lunch or dinner with the family, sitting around together, and that’s what Sano Kitchen is,” she said.
“It’s a restaurant that sells simple, delicious food.”
She recalled being terrified when she entered the MasterChef kitchen, but was reassured when executive producer Marty Benson told her: “We want good tasting, simple food.”
“And that’s what it comes down to. People are busy. They can come here and they can buy this, go home and still sit down and have that taste of home,” she said.
Their partnership began after Mr Ren saw Nonna Gina on MasterChef and she later visited one of his restaurants because she heard it was good.
“And it was. He’s an experienced chef. He’s been all over the world. He’s been overseas doing cooking,” she said of his frequent trips to Europe and time working in Sydney restaurants.
“I’ve learnt from him.”
Mr Ren said he had learnt plenty from her too, with her role as food consultant adding another perspective to the business.
“She has a lot of good ideas,” he said.
That belief in uncomplicated dishes is what first drew Mr Ren to Italian cuisine, about which he said quality ingredients such as prosciutto, sopressa and burrata were key.
“Everything is about homemade bread, homemade pizza, handmade pasta and gnocchi as well,” he said.
The cooking itself has also become part of the attraction, with pizzas emerging from a large oven in full view of the Warrawong Plaza food court and pasta finished inside a giant pecorino wheel.
“After cooking the pasta, we season it in the pecorino wheel so the pasta can get coated in cheese, rather than only putting the cheese on top of the sauce,” Mr Ren said.
While he admits he doesn’t have Italian heritage, he said good cooking transcended nationality and was ultimately about “care and love”.
Unlike Il Lago’s sit-down restaurants, Sano Kitchen focuses on takeaway pizza, pasta, arancini and panini, but Nonna Gina said the change in format didn’t mean compromising on quality.
“The pizzas are made exactly the same way. There’s no compromise on that taste. The quality’s still there,” she said.
“This is very much a first-of-its-kind. You’ve got a restaurant that’s a takeaway, and it’s wonderful.”
She said they were already seeing repeat customers, including one who had returned almost every night to try something different, along with attracting raving fans.
“I made some chilli oil. Someone said, ‘Oh, do you have some chilli?’ I said, ‘I’ve got chilli oil. Would you like fresh chilli oil?’” she said.
“Afterwards, he came up and said, ‘I wouldn’t be giving that away. Charge people for that.’”
Behind the counter, she said the Italian spirit extended to the kitchen banter.
“When the pizza comes out, Ren shouts ‘sfornata’. That means ‘it’s coming out of the oven’,” she said.
“Then we all go ‘che profumo’, which means ‘beautiful smell’.”
The pair hope Warrawong will be the first of many Sano Kitchen locations.
Sano Kitchen is located at Warrawong Plaza food court. They’re open from 8:30 am until 8:30 pm Monday to Friday, and from 10:30 am until 8:30 pm on Saturday and Sunday.
