Kiwi/Brazilian couple Diogo Riedi and Natalia Bertolo, with their 14-month-old son Romeo, have opened a bakery, Romeo Panneteria, in Ōrewa. Photo / Victor D'Alcantara
It’s a story about love: for the art of baking, for the beach and for their toddler son Romeo. Jane Phare talks to a Kiwi-Brazilian couple about why they have opened a bakery in the seaside settlement of Ōrewa.
Diogo Riedi remembers his grandma teaching him to make bread in his hometown of Novo Hamburgo, southern Brazil, more than 30 years ago. She’d tie the dough into little knots to form the shape of birds. He remembers the shape, the feel, the smell of that fresh bread.
“My dearest memories are baking with my grandma. She had a small wood-fired oven. We made doves out of bread. It is the most awesome thing.”
Baking bread was a skill Riedi would never forget and one that he would always love, but it would be years before he found his way back to his true passion. First he became an engineer, working for a manufacturing plant in Brazil. Baking was just a way of relaxing after a stressful day on the factory floor.
“I would end up making so much bread that I would gift it to friends, neighbours, family and I still had much bread left.” He broke the marble counter-top in their apartment after too much aggressive kneading.
Now he’s back in his happy place, up at 3am six days a week, working 80 hours a week, making sure that sourdough bread and pastries are ready when the customers start arriving at his little bakery, Romeo Panetteria.
Hard work for sure but Riedi, 40, says there is nowhere he’d rather be. By his side is his partner of 15 years Natalia Bertolo, 37, who gave up a career in the fashion industry to support Riedi in the business.
It was the premature birth of their toddler son Romeo, born at 30 weeks, that caused the couple to rethink their high-stress careers. Riedi was working for a food manufacturing company, and Bertolo was working for brands like Paris Georgia, and Elle & Riley Cashmere. During the weeks they spent with Romeo at Auckland Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), the couple questioned their priorities.
Why not, Bertolo suggested to Riedi, do what you’ve always dreamed about - open a bakery. Three months ago, they took the plunge, opening Romeo Panetteria beneath the Nautilus apartment tower in Ōrewa.
Named after their son, now 14 months, the bakery is becoming a favourite with locals who call by for an Italian-style sourdough ciabatta, focaccia, calzone, rustic sourdough, rye or Riedi’s special seed bread, all made with organic flour.
Riedi’s career as a baker didn’t start until he was in his late 20s after Bertolo was awarded a scholarship to complete her master’s degree at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Milan, Italy.
“I found myself at crossroads, Riedi says. ”I have this wonderful woman I love who is going to be leaving the country who wants me to come with her.
“And I have this job [in manufacturing] that although I’m good at it, I actually hate it.”
It was baking that brought him joy he decided.
He asked advice from a cousin who worked as a chef for celebrities including Madonna and Donatella Versace. Study at the International Culinary Center (originally the French Culinary Institute) in Soho, New York, his cousin told him.
Bertolo moved to Milan and Riedi went to New York, joining his partner a few months later. He spoke very little Italian so wrote a script to read to the man he wanted to work for, master baker Davide Longoni in Monza (of car-racing fame).
Awesome, Longoni said, or something along those lines in Italian, after he heard Riedi’s pitch. He instructed the young baker to come to an event that night at a Michelin-star restaurant.
“I thought that he would be having me as an assistant,” Riedi remembers with a laugh. “He actually dropped me on the bakery floor and said ‘here’s the flour, here’s the water’ and he took off!”
The couple emigrated to New Zealand 10 years ago, wanting to settle in a country that was safe and offered opportunities to get ahead. Riedi worked in bakeries for a few years, then in food manufacturing businesses. But the idea of opening his own bakery, using natural ingredients with minimal processing, was always in the back of his mind.
Now one of the advantages of being the boss is that he can experiment with new ideas: a soft, pumpkin loaf for winter; an apple-and-walnut loaf for autumn. He adds a little vanilla, and lemon and orange zest to the bakery’s Italian cornetto, like a croissant. And he makes a carbonara scroll which includes bacon from local Ōrewa butcher Marrow, and cheese.
“I’m a sucker for a good sausage roll,” Riedi says. Brand manager Bertolo argued sausage rolls weren’t very Italian but her partner went ahead anyway, using Marrow’s pork-and-fennel sausage, rolled in sage-and-black-pepper pastry.
With the business now growing weekly, Riedi acknowledges the support from the Ōrewa community, many who are older.
“I like hanging out and chatting with elderly people because of my connection with my grandma.
It’s a good marriage, you know? They want a bit of conversation, I love talking to them as well. It just works.”
Jane Phare is the New Zealand Herald’s deputy editor of print.
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