Dimattina, now 36, played 131 games for the Dogs before finishing his career in 2003. Throughout his AFL career he played his part in his family's restaurant business, working at its flagship restaurant, Dimattina's in Lygon Street.
From Monday to Friday Dimattina worked in whatever capacity required — meet and greet, behind the bar, waiting on tables— for two or three hours at lunchtime. After the season, he worked nights as well.
When his AFL career finished, Dimattina went into the business full-time. His first two years were spent on the Gold Coast, where he joined his brother Andrew in helping to expand the family's interests.
Andrew played 28 games at Collingwood. On the Gold Coast, the Dimattina brothers joined forces at Southport, where they played in successive grand finals for one flag. Their teammates included Sam Gilbert, Brett Renouf, Jesse White, Brad Moran and Kurt Tippett.
"It was the best fun I've had playing for years," Paul says. "Not that the AFL isn't fun, but it's a massive commitment."
Back down south, Paul has become the face of the business, generally visible during his visits to the family's six restaurants in Melbourne. There's also three restaurants on the Gold Coast and one in Adelaide.
"I oversee the whole operation," Paul says. "I look after the managers."
The interview takes place in the Society restaurant at the top of Bourke Street. Dimattina is wearing a pair of silver-grey strides, a fitted black shirt and black leather shoes. He must get flustered given the scale of his job, but you can never imagine him losing his sense of style.
On the morning of the interview, he's already had meetings with the marketing people, the accountant and his father Frank, who continues to play a role in the business in semi-retirement.
"We call him the quality control manager," Paul says.
Paul's grandfather, Frank senior, came out from Italy in 1922. The family is from the Aeolian islands, which are strung out across the top of Sicily.
The poverty of those islands has driven a remarkable number of Aeolian immigrants to become successful in business in Melbourne.
In 1954 the Dimattina family created Mocopan, the first major coffee business in Melbourne. In 1973 Frank junior bought the family's first restaurant, La Dolce Vita in Armadale.
Paul's sense of history shines through in his creation of Society, which is a touch more sophisticated than the mid-level restaurants that underpin the family's business.
Society was known as the Italian Society restaurant when it was established in 1932. Its name was changed a decade later because the circumstances of World War II meant that the national sentiment was against anything Italian.
It remained Society until it underwent two name changes in the 1990s. The Dimattinas bought the restaurant in 2007 with a view to reviving its glory days.
Paul made sure the décor and menu were the same as those from the restaurant's heyday in the 1930s. The walls are adorned with images of food and wine and maps of Italian provinces, just like they were before the war.
"I like history," Paul says.
The Dimattinas' footy history is like a box of Smarties. Frank was a rover who played 58 games at Richmond and North Melbourne in the 1960s and early '70s. In the late '80s, when the Tigers were at a low ebb, he served as team manager.
Andrew played as a midfielder at Box Hill in the VFL and in the Essendon reserves before playing for Collingwood for three seasons, including the grand final season of 2002.
Paul was on the list at the Richmond, playing in the reserves while still at school at Marcellin College, before receiving a jolt.
"I was delisted," he says. "I'd finished Year 12 and I thought it was all going to happen for me. It was a bit of a shock."
Dimattina then played at Essendon on the supplementary list and was all set to be drafted on to the Bombers' senior list when the Dogs pipped them in the 1995 pre-season draft.
He played at the Bulldogs for nine seasons, during which time he became a busy midfielder with the ability to streak into space—as well as a frequent visitor to the tribunal. "I had an angry streak," he says.
One the quirks of his career is that he met his two closest friends from footy, Mark Mercuri and Steve Alessio, at Essendon.
Dimattina says his jolt at Richmond, which the family considered its club, taught him that nothing is achieved without effort.
"Things don’t come easy," he says. "You've got to work in life."
Like most former footballers, he's come away from the game believing in the value of unity.
"I talk to my staff as if they're part of a team," he says. "You don't all have to be best friends, but when you turn up you work harmoniously."
Away from work, Dimattina likes to spend time with his boy and two girls aged from seven to three. At work, he escapes his daily rigours by repairing to the third floor of the Society restaurant and doing something he learned at the Whitten Oval.
While Frank Sinatra croons through ballads on the floors below, a former tribunal hound does transcendental meditation.
"I gives me clarity of thought; an inner calmness," he says.
