Where there’s smoke there’s ire: Central Coast’s highest-rated restaurant forced to close

Osteria il Coccia in Ettalong, the highest-scoring Central Coast restaurant in The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide, is set to close on September 2 after failing to rectify smoke complaints.

The hatted Italian restaurant, which opened in 2019, was described by Good Food Guide editor Callan Boys as a more affordable alternative to Sydney’s Firedoor, with a fine-dining approach to wood-fired cooking that made it a star of the Netflix series Chef’s Table: BBQ.

“[Owner-chef] Nicola Coccia’s cooking is equal parts commanding and comforting and there isn’t another restaurant on the Central Coast quite like it,” Boys wrote in his July review.

Like Firedoor executive chef Lennox Hastie, Coccia cooked exclusively over fire, serving dishes such as dry-aged pork cutlet with romesco, saltbush and caramelised onion.

But unlike at Firedoor, the smoke at Osteria wasn’t funnelled up a chimney to the rooftop. Instead, it poured out of the rear of the building, leading to 20 of complaints to the Central Coast Council, and the restaurant’s ultimate downfall.

Alexandra Coccia, who co-owns Osteria il Coccia with husband Nicola, says the closure order came as a shock.

“We built that restaurant from nothing, and after five years we were in a good position to start to expand and come out of our loans,” she says.

“We made it through COVID, and everything that came after, and we never fell … it’s just a lot to take.”

The couple were on the up before the announcement, having partnered with renowned Central Coast butcher Saratoga Quality Meats to open their second venue, Carne & Cucina, on August 14. The more casual Carne & Cucina will continue to trade, unaffected by the closure of Osteria il Coccia.

At Osteria il Coccia, a council investigation in May 2022 found the ventilation system servicing the restaurant had been incorrectly placed, had not undergone the necessary air quality assessment and was unsuitable for wood-fired cooking.

A council spokesperson says: “[We] appreciate the restaurant is recognised for its use of wood fire and charcoal cooking methods. However, these cooking methods produce smoke that needs to be properly managed, particularly given the restaurant’s proximity to residences.”

The restaurant is located beneath three storeys of residential apartments.

Alexandra Coccia says their landlord, who lent them the money for the restaurant and helped them in the construction process, assured them all the required certification had been taken care of.

Central Coast real estate agency Stone, which managed the property, confirmed the landlord paid for and installed the kitchen equipment, but says they were not involved in the certification process.

The Coccias made several attempts to save their “baby”. They retrofitted a mechanical ventilation unit (which reduced, but didn’t eliminate, the impact on neighbouring residents); proposed installing a roof exhaust system (which ran into approval and cost problems); and even considered switching to gas, but the landlord rejected the idea, says Alexandra Coccia.

However, Stone principal Helen Hugh says the landlord offered to put in a gas connection “but [the restaurant] didn’t want to compromise its style of cooking”.

At an impasse, the landlord allowed the Coccias to break their lease without penalty on condition they vacated the property within six weeks and left all the kitchen equipment the landlord had bought in lieu of the $70,000 they owed.

The closure is expected to cost the pair about $200,000, most of which will go towards repaying suppliers.

Restaurant staff will not lose their jobs, however. Rather, they will move to the Coccias’ second restaurant. Carne & Cucina, which is serving 800-gram grass-fed eye fillet with mushrooms and pepper sauce, using meat butchered in-house, and house-made pumpkin and cavolo nero casarecce.

“We will start again,” says Alexandra Coccia. “We will rebuild our finances, and then we will think about our next steps.”