If you ever drive along the Fleurieu Peninsula and follow the scent of warm bread carried on the sea breeze, you’ll find yourself at Our Place @ Willunga Hill and in the heart of Andrew (Andy) Clappis’s life story.

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Born into a home where the rhythm of life was set to the clatter of pans and the laughter of dinner guests, Andy grew up in the golden era of Italian hospitality in South Australia. His father, Gaudenzio (Enzo) Clappis, a refugee from Istria, had brought to Adelaide something new and intoxicating: the taste of Italy. From the age of seven, Andy was there beside him, standing on a banana crate to reach the sink at Buonasera Restaurant, washing dishes with one hand and absorbing the language of service with the other.

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By seventeen, he was restless and ambitious, eager to prove that his father’s fire burned in him too. With the encouragement of family friends, he travelled to Gstaad, Switzerland, where the clinking of silver trays and the elegance of five-star dining transformed him. At the Park Hotel, serving royalty and film stars, he learned that food could be theatre,  that each dish, each gesture, was a story waiting to be told.

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Back in Adelaide, Andy took that philosophy and rewrote what dining could be. At the Maylands Hotel, he blurred the line between restaurant and pub, introducing espresso machines, handmade bread, and the idea that fine food belonged to everyone. And then came Our Place: his magnum opus, perched high on Willunga Hill. Here, he invites guests not just to eat but to journey, every loaf kneaded by hand, every recipe laced with memory.

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When Andy speaks of bread, it isn’t flour and yeast, it’s family, history, and survival. 'Bread is life', he says. And when you taste his crusty, fire-baked loaves, a whisper of the Alps, a breath of Sicily, and a hint of Australian soil, you believe him.

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Andy Clappis doesn’t just feed people. He feeds their stories, their nostalgia, their hunger for connection. And as the sun sets over his restaurant, with a glass of McLaren Vale red in hand, you can feel why, like his bread, his story keeps rising.