A slice of Italy in Futian

Cathy Mo

Angelo Caroppo, a 55-year-old Italian, is passionate about food and also the owner of the newly relaunched Angelo Mediterranean Sun at the center of Futian CBD.

By refurbishing the old Trattoria Italiana Da Angelo, the oldest authentic Italian restaurant in Futian District, Caroppo aims to bring the city a variety of Mediterranean cuisine.

Stepping into the restaurant on the second floor of the Excellence Century Building, customers are submerged in a trendy atmosphere. However, regulars still can find family photos hanging on a big wall, a tradition of the family business.

“I was born in the scenic southern city of Taranto San-Marzano in the Puglia region and I loved the farmers, farms and organic food. I started to cook dishes when I was a kid,” Caroppo said.

“The first time I came to Shenzhen — also my first time in China — was with my then Chinese girlfriend. I decided to bring a piece of Italy to the city,” Caroppo said.

He met his future wife Zhu Manying while traveling in Cambodia in early 2005.

“It was a miracle,” said Zhu, who hails from Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province.

“I was on a Chinese package tour. Our group always bumped into the same foreign group in different tourist sites. After that happened a few times, a man from the foreign group came to greet me. It was at that moment he fell in love with me. Although we sometimes had to use body language as we could not communicate in fluent English, I found him energetic and interesting, so I accepted him,” Zhu said. “And then he followed me to my work in Shenzhen.”

The Italian man was confident about his restaurant. He worked with food in Germany when he was 18 before traveling to Los Angeles, the United States, to run a small restaurant.

He was a private chef for big Hollywood names, including Mel Brooks, Steven Seagal and Bill Cosby while they were on movie sets. “They loved my pizza,” Caroppo said.

The first Trattoria Italiana Da Angelo opened in the Sea World area in Nanshan District in December 2005.

“We named the restaurant Trattoria because we would like to provide a feeling of home to expats in Shenzhen,” he said.

“In Italy, a trattoria is an eating place in a family style, less formal than a ristorante, but more formal than an osteria. It’s a restaurant for everybody in Italy,” Caroppo said.

To make the food more Italian, he uses organically grown herbs and vegetables from his own garden.

“As I love Italian paintings, I invited Pietro De Pace, a well-known Italian artist and an old friend of mine, to paint the frescos for my restaurant,” he said.

His trattoria became popular among expats in Shekou for its authenticity and a Futian Coco Park branch opened in 2007.

“At that time the Coco Park area was not quite developed. There were construction sites here and there, and water and mud here and there. It seemed that nobody would be willing to come to my restaurant even if I offered them 50 yuan (US$8),” he said.

“It was torture for me — the first two unprofitable years. I put all my life into it. I cooked myself. I was there waiting for my guests. I thought they might need some more time to find me. Two years later some started to come. I think it was because we have a kind of family feeling in the restaurant.”

In 2011, Caroppo set up his third trattoria in OCT Bay, with the same style as the other restaurants, but a bigger floor space.

His son Alessio came to help him manage the restaurants.

Caroppo later moved his Futian restaurant to its current location and renamed it Angelo Mediterranean Sun on Dec. 24, 2015.

“If you want to be somebody in this business, you need to put a lot of ingredients in. You have to be faithful to your guests. You have to be loyal to the job. You have to dedicate your life. Apart from all these you need to persist. If you don’t have passion you can’t make it.”