STAFF PROFILE

Award winning Adelaide Chef Camillo Crugnale grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. As a child he went for many trips with his family to all regions of the South Australian coastline for family holidays. A keen boat owner, he shares his love of boating and fishing with family and friends. Camillo can trace his love for food from the initial stages of his childhood as he carefully watched his mother making daily meals in their humble family home or helping his grandmother and grandfather make the eternal pizza Ripieno or deboning a whole pig to make many different smallgoods to be shared for celebrations. He recalls at eight years old cooking in the garage kitchen and foraging in his dad’s backyard garden. His father never forgave him for pulling out all the carrots which were only five centimetres to make a salad for himself and his mates. At the age of 16, armed only with his parents’ and grandparents’ information about how to cook an Italian kitchen recipe in his own family home, he went out to commence work on his passion. Camillo started his apprenticeship in a hotel in Adelaide and has achieved Chef of the Year and Best Restaurant in Adelaide and Australia for his cooking and hospitality. His staff had a ’Yes, I can attitude’ to patrons who frequented where he was cooking.

Awards His amazing technique of handling a team of chefs and front of house management over the last 12 years demonstrates how he has promoted team food, teamwork and family values that is evidenced by the many chefs who have joined him in his own kitchens and front of house and believe in his cookery and knowledge. Over the years Camillo has received 20 culinary awards which go back to 2006 when he was the winner of the Best New Restaurant, Assaggio, and include Chef of the Year, Australia’s Best Formal Italian Restaurant, Hall of Fame Inductee and with his Mr Nicks Kitchen & Coffee Bar he won the 2019 Lux Award for the Most Initiative, Executive Chef in Adelaide. He also was part of a children’s cooking book called Food of my Home Country which was released in January 2009 and featured in two Oz Harvest cookbooks. He is passionate about charity and the celebration of events which raise funds to help people in need to be better off.

Welcome to the Club Camillo.

In his words ~

“I am a chef, I will always be a chef, it’s not something I do, this is who I am. Cooking is not an escape for me, it is where I belong, where I am supposed to be.

It is the gift my mother gave me and I will show you. When you understand this, you understand me and we will eat together. This is who I really am”