Celebrated chef, food writer and teacher Elise Pascoe and husband John Kelly have put their Kiama home on the market with plans to relocate to Melbourne.
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Mrs Pascoe and Mr Kelly are moving interstate after 14 years of calling the Illawarra home, to be closer to family after Mr Kelly had a stroke 15 months ago.
Mrs Pascoe is her husband's full-time carer.
Their Italian-style villa at 10 Seaview Street is up for sale for offers above $1.4 million.
Mrs Pascoe, well known for teaching thousands of people the secrets of her success in the kitchen at her award-winning Elise Pascoe International Cooking School at Jamberoo in the early 2000s, said she would leave the region with fond memories.
"We'll be very sad to leave here," she said.
"We've made lots of wonderful friends and we've had a wonderful time, especially when we had the Elise Pascoe International Cooking School up on the mountain and that was such a success.
"We enjoyed that immensely but having sold that [in 2007] we moved to Italy for a year which influenced the Italian elements of this house we built in Kiama."
The four-bedroom house, which began taking shape in 2009 and was completed in 2010, reflects the couple's love of all things Italian.
"We imported the doors, the shutters and the windows from Italy," Mrs Pascoe said. "They were especially made for us there in the Italian style.
"We built a walled Roman garden which is very private and faces the back of the hearth, and from the street you would never have any idea what was behind the frontage.
"It's a very private and wonderful garden for entertaining. We've had lots of parties."
The master-built free-flowing home has many European fittings and imported flooring. It has a library with twin bookcases which opens onto a northern Juliet balcony. A sitting room opens to the garden.
"We were quite determined to make this the last house we ever lived in, so we were a bit extravagant," Mrs Pascoe said.
"Nevertheless some lucky person will take over from us and I hope continue in the same vein."
There are even Tuscan terracotta pineapples on the gateposts in the driveway, which Mrs Pascoe explained, were a welcoming sign from the Napoleonic period.
The home also features several wrought-iron gates that were copied from the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice; and a mosaic on the front verandah which Mrs Pascoe made after attending a full-time three-week mosaic course in Venice.
"I have to leave all these lovely things behind," she said. "But the next stage of our lives will be easier with the help of children."
Listed with Michele Lay and Matthew Lay of Ray White Kiama, the home has three or four bedrooms, two bathrooms and powder room, cloak room and a separate pavilion for two vehicles.
