LEFT: ROBBIE AND LOUIE OUTSIDE THEIR NEW VENTURE, ZERO DAVEY ITALIAN ABOVE: ROBBIE PREPARING A COFFEE FOR A CUSTOMER
After a few years away from the hospitality limelight, two Italian industry stalwarts are returning in partnership – bringing with them authentic flavours, decades of hard-earned experience, and the warm, familiar personalities that have long made them favourites in Tasmania’s dining scene. F or two men who have spent more than four decades in Tasmanian hospitality, the idea of opening a new restaurant together might look, from the outside, like a late-career risk. For Robbie Marino and Louie Sorgi, it feels more like inevitability. The pair have known each other almost their entire lives. Their parents were close, they grew up in the same circles, and they kicked a football around together long before either of them stepped behind a coffee machine or into a commercial kitchen. Hospitality came later, but once it did, it never really let go. Now, after years of running their own successful venues, stepping away, and watching the industry evolve, Robbie and Louie have reunited professionally, opening Zero Davey Italian on Hobart’s waterfront at the start of January. It’s a
partnership built on trust, complementary strengths and a shared belief that authentic Italian food – done properly with Tasmanian produce –has a powerful and prominent place in the state’s dining scene. The venue itself carried weight before a plate even hit the table. Closed for more than two years following the fire in late 2023 in the adjacent apartments, the space sat dormant, a reminder of how fragile hospitality precincts can be when one link in the chain breaks. Reopening it was not just a commercial decision, but a symbolic one. For Robbie, who purchased Harbour Lights Café in 1997 and ran it for more than 20 years, the waterfront is familiar territory. For Louie, whose first restaurant, The Riviera, operated just around the corner on Hunter Street in the 1980s, the location represents something closer to coming home. Together, they believe the timing, and the partnership, is right. “We grew up together, our parents were like family but then we actually played soccer together as well. We’re almost like brothers and we trust each
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Tasmanian Hospitality Review February/March Edition
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