Liu Minxia

    OUT of a passion for the catering industry, Giulio Cinisi (better known to his friends as Giulio) and his friends Benedetto Stella and Enzo Lamacchia, have long dreamed of bringing real Italian food to Shenzhen.

    When Giulioi, from Milan, Italy, came to Shenzhen about five years ago to work for a five-star hotel under the OCT Group, he first became the manager of the hotel’s Italian restaurant. He was soon promoted and became the hotel’s manager of Western restaurants.

    “About four years after I started at the hotel, OCT began to plan the OCT East resort area. I was put on the pre-opening team and became the assistant food and beverage director,” he said.

    At that time, Giulio began to think he should open an Italian restaurant of his own. “There are some important challenges people should try,” he said. “I wanted to bring authentic Italian food to Shenzhen residents as I feel that some U.S. chain restaurants have created confusion about what real Italian food is in the minds of locals.”

    His encounter with Stella and Lamacchia about a year ago helped him make his decision. At that time, Stella was working in an Italian restaurant in Shenzhen and Lamacchia worked for a pizza restaurant in Dongguan. Both had been working as chefs for more than 10 years.

    “They know how to cook and everything about the kitchen and I have strong leadership skills,” Giulio said. “The most important thing is that we all have a passion for what we do. It’s not just work for us. It’s what we love to do.”

    An experienced pizza maker who learned how to make pizzas and pasta from a very young age, Lamacchia could guarantee that the restaurant had quality home-made pizzas and pasta, which are important parts of Italian cuisine. Meanwhile, Stella, the head chef, knows the old recipes for southern Italian food.

    “We then became partners and best friends,” Giulio said. He said Lamacchia and Stella were fun and versatile people. Lamacchia plays guitar well and Stella loves dancing to Latin music and they spend a lot of nights together after work.

    “But it’s not easy to open a business for foreigners,” Giulio said. “Thankfully, I built up a lot of connections while working in Shenzhen and my Chinese friend, Jacky Huang, who owns a restaurants and small hotels, helped us a lot. He simply told me all the things I needed to know.”

    With the help of his friends, he found an ideal location in the Chegongmiao area, a fast-growing area with new hotels and residential and commercial buildings shooting up.

    “Chinese people are becoming increasingly open to overseas cultures, people and lifestyles,” he said. “Although the restaurant opened only about a month ago, we have received a lot of good feedback, from locals and expatriates. I hope our restaurant will finally expand to other places in Shenzhen.”

    To achieve that goal, Giulio thinks passion, experience, an open mind and patience are all essential, but passion is the most important.

    “You can’t think the business only. You must have the passion, otherwise it can never become successful,” Giulio said.

     Editor's note:

This page has been running the "A Shenzhen Dream" column to cover expatriate businesspeople doing business in Shenzhen. Information and stories of this kind are welcome.