Settebello: Taste a little piece of Italy

After spending more than two decades in the music industry life has come full circle for Pino di Benedetto, Bedfordview restaurateur and co-owner of Settebello, the Italian Club’s eatery.

Pino grew up in a foodie family, his dad, the original pizza maker at Hillbrow’s Bella Napoli restaurant,  which later became one of Johannesburg’s most popular and long-lasting weekend jols.

But a happenstance meeting with record company executives swept him away from waiting tables at his career’s start, eventually holding top office at one of the largest independents, EMI.

He said: “I was a waiter at a restaurant where EMI marketing executives were having lunch. We got chatting and they suggested I apply for an entry level PR job.” And he decided to go for it but within his first week on the job he thought that he’d get fired. 

“I knew nothing about music, and on about day three, the managing director asked me what kind of pop music I liked. My answer, Pavarotti, which was of course a genre far removed from the question,” said Di Benedetto.

Watch: Meet Settebello restaurant’s Pino and Miro

He later heard that the boss had told his supervisor it was doubtful he would last.  A decade later, Di Benedetto had the corner office and the top job. But Universal Music acquired EMI and, after winding down his career during the takeover, Di Benedetto exited the industry.

It was a meeting with restaurant and business consultant Miro Marques at Bedfordview’s Italian Club that turned the page in his career.

Marque was there on assignment to look into the viability of transforming the previously club-run eatery into a restaurant owned and managed by privateers. Said Di Benedetto: “We had a coffee, clicked, and in an instant decided to open Settebello together.”

Marques said:  “From the moment we started talking, we’ve become the best of friends, it’s probably the only guy that I said that I love you to, ever.”

Settebello became a labour of love. “We literally built this place ourselves, brought tools from home, bought materials from antique shops, from salvage yards. Literally blood, sweat and tears, actually more like breaking arms and fingers,” Marques remembered.

For Di Benedetto it’s all about authenticity. Settebello follows the traditional Napolitano way of cooking. Before opening its doors, the pair hosted an Italian chef for three months during which time he trained everyone in the art of traditional, authentic southern Italian cuisine.

“Italian food is the most bastardised food in the world. When I started this journey, we opted to follow a traditional style of Italian cooking, the type of food that I was fed by my grandmother,” Di Benedetto said.

He claimed Italian food in South Africa is not really, well, Italian. “You’ll get to an Italian restaurant and you’ll find a Greek salad on the menu.

You’ll find bacon and banana on a pizza. It’s cool, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not Italian. Rather Mediterranean. You won’t find bacon, you won’t find feta, you won’t find pineapple on our menu. Bolognese is American. On our menu you’ll find authentic ragu.

”Southern Italian cooking is basic and rarely comprises more than four ingredients. And that includes a lot of tomato, said Di Benedetto. Calabria salad, for example, comprises onion and tomato with a bit of olive oil.

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“Salad dressing should not come into the equation. Why do you want to taste a dressing when the salad is about the tomato?

”Also, forget the truckloads of garlic on a pizza. 

“It doesn’t exist in Italy. It’s not like cartoons where Italians always have garlic breath. We don’t use garlic.”

He grew up in the Italian Club, and for him, preserving, nurturing and promoting a culture of family is first prize.

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