Sydney institution AC Butchery has shut its doors, just months after the death earlier this year of founder Carlo Colaiacomo. "Closing the shop is like experiencing a death all over again," says Colaiacomo's daughter, Licia Colaiacomo-Curro, who also lost her mother, Angela Colaiacomo, late last year.

She says the family stepped up to continue to operate the 45-year-old Leichhardt food destination, but it wasn't "sustainable" without the involvement of the celebrity butcher, who was inducted into the Sydney Food Hall of Fame in 2003.

Carlo and Angela changed the Sydney food scene, championing the production of local prosciutto and turning AC Butchery into a pit-stop for a who's who of the food world, Tetsuya Wakuda and Neil Perry among those spotted beneath its hanging smallgoods.

At its peak, there were AC Butchery outlets in Surry Hills, Rose Bay and the Sydney CBD. "He always said he landed in Australia in 1970 with $20 in his pocket and a carton of smokes," Colaiacomo-Curro told Good Food earlier this year.

Colaiacomo-Curro, who has relocated to Mudgee, and her brother will retain the AC moniker (which stands for Angela and Carlo) and might rebirth it as a food brand in the future.