His parents Glenn and Katia Dwarte are well known in the Illawarra for their chain of McDonald's restaurants.
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Now John and wife Aleida Dwarte have created their own 'Ambiance'. And the pair hope Ambiance Ristorante is their first of many ventures together.
The opening of the restaurant/cafe in Unanderra is the realisation of a long-held dream for John Dwarte.
"This is a little bit of a change. My parents have obviously had McDonald's stores in the area for the last 28 years now.
"We've decided to do something a little bit different but obviously still in the food industry, which is something that I'm really passionate about," Dwarte said.
He said the name of the traditional Italian restaurant was inspired by wanting to create a special ambiance for customers.
"What I wanted to do was create a restaurant that is really homely and rustic feeling, like going to your grandparents or Nonna's place for dinner," Dwarte said.
"It is really about traditional Italian dishes. We want to create a really homely feeling.
"When you come in to the restaurant there's bricks on the wall, there is a lot of wood to make it feel really warm but at the same time it is nice and open as well.
"Warm lighting, warm bricks and the wood together ties in to create the ambiance of going to your grandparents' place.
"That was kind of the thinking for the name."
The restaurant/cafe is open for breakfast most days and for lunch and dinner, Wednesday to Saturday.
It specialises in serving tasty hand-made and fresh pasta dishes.
"We make all our pastas in-house, we do the majority by hand," Dwarte said.
"I have imported some pasta machines from Italy as well to help us with that process. We specialise in hand-made pastas, we don't do pizza or anything like that, it is traditional Italian dishes.
"We make all our gnocchi by hand, we keep it fresh. A lot of other places, they make it and then they freeze it, as soon as you freeze something you affect the quality of the product.
"Everything we do is really fresh and you can taste that, definitely on the plate.
"It is a very labour intensive process. You get people who really love what they are doing and are really connected to the food to make all this stuff by hand and that is something that we are really interested in doing.
"You aren't going to get these pastas at your regular Italian restaurant.
"These are traditional Italian dishes done in the right way, plated in a modern way with modern ingredients as well."
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