Giorgio Nava looks quite sprightly first thing in the morning, which is an amazing feat when you consider that he's at the helm of 95 Keerom, Carné, the recently opened Down South, and will soon be adding Café Milano to his repertoire. And did I mention that we're seated at a wooden counter in his newest business venture, Mozzarella Bar.

‘Luckily I don't need to sleep a lot,’ he says. ‘Plus, working gives me a lot of energy.’

I must admit, this isn't my first visit to the chicly diminutive shop, which is ideally located on a frenetic stretch of Kloof Street. Yesterday, in the spirit of research, I popped in and ordered a heavenly deep-fried fior di latte sarmie, before scoping out the space.

Delightful Italian manageress Gaia Ferradini was behind the counter preparing a platter of Parma ham and mozzarella for a Romeo-and-Juliet-aged couple, when she suddenly exclaimed, ‘Latte!’, gesticulating to the creamy contents of a burrata she'd just torn open.

The starry-eyed lovers were quite taken with their choice, as was I for that matter, because, let's be honest, authentic hand-pulled mozzarella is still quite a novelty for the everyday Joe. And there we all were, in a bar dedicated to the milky mounds.

‘As far as I know, this is a first in Africa,’ says Giorgio over the cacophony of nine o'clock traffic outside. ‘When I moved here 10 years ago, I opened a small mozzarella laboratory in Durbanville, but South Africans weren't quite ready for it. All they knew was the gummy, yellow stuff that was available in supermarkets. I like to call them tennis balls! One of the chefs I supplied actually thought the mozzarella I gave him was rotten because of the water inside!’

‘The market is very different now,’ he continues. ‘When two of my friends recently moved to South Africa from Puglia in the south of Italy, they wanted to start producing mozzarella so, of course, I gave them my support.’

After receiving an overwhelmingly positive response to the cheese from patrons in his restaurants, Giorgio decided to make it more accessible to the public, and thus the Mozzarella Bar was born.

‘It's a huge trend overseas,’ explains Giorgio. ‘They’re even opening in countries such as Russia and China.’

Exclusively stocking Puglia's range of cheese, the bar covers the mozzarella spectrum. Giorgio believes the milky fior di latte mounds and the smaller nodino (Italian for 'knot'), are best paired with sun-ripened Italian tomatoes, a crack of pepper and a drizzle of olive oil, but his menu also stars a host of other classic combinations. The smoky affumicata (slightly firmer in texture and a personal favourite after subsequent taste testing) is showcased in a salad with corn, rocket, cherry tomato and olives, while the air-dried scamorza would happily bubble away on a thin-crusted pizza along with fig and rocket.

And Giorgio's favourite item on the menu? ‘Definitely the panzerotto Giorgio,’ he smiles. ‘It's a bread envelope filled with cooked ham, tomato and fresh mozzarella di latte, which is then deep-fried. It's a typical street-food snack in Italy.’

What more can I say? The man had me at ‘deep-fried’.