My sister, Rosa, is nine years younger than me and was born in Australia. It’s a big age gap and we have become closer during the later years of our lives. She is similar to me, with a love of food and cooking.

Mum wasn’t happy when I told her I wanted to become a chef – a typical migrant mum response. She was expecting me to do more with my life. Mum could get tense and angry with me when I was younger. She had a loving nurturing side, but an incredibly hardcore attitude, too. I can be pig-headed at times, and that comes from my mum and grandmother.

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I started MoVida with my ex-partner, Vanessa Hodge, in 2001 at the back of a pub in West Melbourne and we opened in Hosier Lane in 2003. We met at [restaurant] Grossi Florentino in 2000 and started dating. I went to Spain to work and stayed for a year, and then she joined me.

Vanessa is strong-willed and has been very influential with MoVida – she was the one who suggested we move to a share-plate tapas menu rather than traditional fine dining. We were together from 2000 to 2014 and have two sons – Pepe, aged 16, and Hugo, 13.

I met my wife, Emily, in 2015. I was cooking on a steamboat in Mildura with Stefano de Pieri and she was there in a work capacity. We got married a few years later. I have two stepdaughters, Alex, 23, and Bethany, 21. Alex manages one of the MoVida restaurants and Bethany manages our new restaurant in Auckland.

Frank Camorra’s latest pottery collaboration with Robert Gordon is available now.

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