A corner that
kept its word.

Antonio Ruggerino opened Verde on the corner of Stanley and Riley in 2007. He was thirty-four. He had cooked professionally since he was sixteen, trained in Italy, and represented Australia at the Berlin Culinary Olympics.

None of that is the reason the restaurant has lasted twenty years.

The reason is older than that. Antonio grew up in a Calabrian household in Sydney, the son of farmers from the south of Italy. His mother cooked. His father kept the garden. Long lunches stretched into long afternoons. He learned to cook in her kitchen, watching, years before he set foot in a professional one.

Verde is the long version of that lunch.

The menu is modern Italian. The recipes are his mother’s. The herbs come from her garden in Collaroy, the eggs from her chickens, and the olive oil from a pressing his family still makes themselves. Some of the dishes that opened the restaurant in 2007 are still on the menu, more or less unchanged.

A second venue opens in Alexandria in 2026. Same kitchen, same hands. Verde holds three hats from Gault & Millau, which Antonio doesn’t mention. He’d rather you came in and tried the food.

Verde. Green. Fresh. Alive. A name that means the thing it does.