Buon Appetito: The Best Italian Restaurants in Melbourne

The best Italian restaurants in Melbourne cover serious ground, from handmade pasta bars and old-school dining rooms to wood-fired pizzerias, Sicilian favourites, regional kitchens and wine-led trattorias. Tipo 00, Florentino, Il Bacaro, 400 Gradi, Bar Idda and Trattoria Emilia all speak to a city where Italian food is not one thing, but many beautifully argued ones.

Melbourne does not treat Italian food as a passing craving. It has been part of the city’s grammar for generations, from the espresso-and-red-sauce mythology of Lygon Street to the linened old guard, the new pasta bars, Sicilian kitchens, pizza obsessives and suburban rooms where someone’s nonna would still have an opinion.

No single idea of Italy leads the charge here, and that is precisely the point. Some restaurants are made for hand-cut pasta and Barolo; others for blistered pizza, late Negronis, seafood linguine, cotoletta, tiramisu or a three-hour lunch that rearranges the day. Chosen for flavour, feeling and craft, these are the Italian restaurants in Melbourne we would send you to first.

The 12 Essential Italian Restaurants in Melbourne

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Before we get into the full suburb-by-suburb guide, these are the Italian restaurants in Melbourne we would book first. The institutions, pasta bars, pizzerias, regional specialists and new-school rooms that explain why this city is so fluent in Italian food.

Tipo 00, Melbourne CBD

Melbourne’s pasta benchmark still earns the first booking. Tipo 00 is all tight tables, serious flour and saucing with intent, from squid-ink tagliolini with bottarga to potato gnocchi with braised duck, porcini and pecorino pepato, before the now-famous Tipomisù finishes the argument. Small room, big reputation, not a strand of spaghetti wasted.

361 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne

Scopri, Carlton

Scopri has long been one of Carlton’s grown-up Italian addresses, drawing from regions across the country rather than flattening Italy into a greatest-hits menu. Dinner follows the traditional arc of antipasto, pasta, main and dessert, while the wine list remembers Italy has 20 regions and gives them serious attention. There is precision here, but also warmth; the pleasure comes from letting dinner unfold the Italian way, course by course, bottle by bottle.

191 Nicholson Street, Carlton

Florentino, Melbourne CBD

Florentino carries Bourke Street gravitas with chandeliers overhead and history pressed into the walls. Now in its next chapter under Rebecca Yazbek and Edition Group, the room still has its Italian soul intact: handmade pasta, polished classics, tiramisu, chocolate soufflé and the sense that lunch has entered legally binding territory. Melbourne has changed around it; Florentino still commands the room.

80 Bourke Street, Melbourne

Di Stasio, St Kilda / CBD / Carlton

Di Stasio is not simply one restaurant, but a Melbourne Italian temperament: art, appetite, white jackets, sharp edges and unmistakable self-possession. Café Di Stasio carries the Fitzroy Street mythology; Città takes the city sharper; and Carlton gives glamour a newer room without losing the voltage. No serious Melbourne Italian guide leaves it out.

31 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda; 45 Spring Street, Melbourne; 224 Faraday Street, Carlton

Osteria Ilaria, Melbourne CBD

Osteria Ilaria is Tipo 00’s broader-minded sibling, taking the same culinary intelligence well beyond the pasta bowl. Paccheri, seafood, bitter leaves, bright sauces and clever little snacks move through a menu with one eye firmly on Europe, backed by a wine list that rewards curiosity over safe choices. Order the pasta you came for, then let the second bottle quietly erase whatever you had planned afterwards.

367 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne

Lagotto, Fitzroy North

Locals tend to treat Lagotto like information worth rationing… and for good reason. Oysters and crudo might begin the evening before handmade pasta, swordfish cotoletta and whatever seasonal idea has caught the kitchen’s attention that week. When saffron spaghetti with bluefin tuna, bottarga and wood sorrel appears, there is very little to discuss beyond ordering it. Fitzroy North knows what it has.

1 York Street, Fitzroy North

400 Gradi, Brunswick East

400 Gradi remains the Lygon Street pizza benchmark, and for once, the reputation is not just heat rising off mozzarella. The Brunswick East original built its name on Neapolitan dough, a 400-degree oven and a margherita with international bragging rights. Order it simply and let the crust make the case.

99 Lygon Street, Brunswick East

Bar Idda, Brunswick East

Bar Idda gives Brunswick East its Sicilian pulse: eggplant, pecorino, cannoli, salt, generosity and streetlight. The mulinciani, a baked eggplant lasagne layered with buffalo mozzarella and pecorino, is the dish to plan around. Rustic and regionally specific, it brings a sun baked southern register to Lygon Street.

132 Lygon Street, Brunswick East

Bar Carolina, South Yarra

Bar Carolina is looking particularly good in its Karen Martini era. The Chris Connell terrazzo, leadlight and dark timber remain, while cicchetti, carpaccio, house-made pasta and serious cuts from the Josper have given the South Yarra stalwart fresh appetite. Barolo receives plenty of real estate on the wine list, as it should. Come for an aperitivo and you may still be negotiating with yourself over one more plate several hours later.

44 Toorak Road, South Yarra

Capitano, Carlton

Capitano lives somewhere between red-sauce clubhouse and clever neighbourhood trattoria, which explains why Carlton keeps filling the tables. Fermented pizza bases arrive beneath generous toppings, the wine list carries Bar Liberty DNA and the desserts are happily acquainted with amaro. Then there is the bone-in veal cutlet, an order large enough to alter whatever sharing strategy the table had previously agreed upon.

421 Rathdowne Street, Carlton

Rocco’s Bologna Discoteca, Fitzroy

Rocco’s is what happens when a cult sandwich shop grows up, keeps the jokes and learns how to run a trattoria. The meatball sub remains part of the mythology, but bone marrow garlic bread, crudo, salumi, hand-rolled pasta and grill specials make the wider case. Loud, saucy and far smarter than it lets on.

15 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy

Bar Olo, Carlton

Barolo is more than a name at Bar Olo. Scopri’s Piemonte-minded sibling pours the region generously, including back vintages and Coravin selections, alongside vitello tonnato, prawn tramezzini, pappardelle ripiene and agnolotti del plin. Wood panelling and close tables make Nicholson Street feel a long way from Melbourne for an evening. The difficult part is deciding which arrives first: another plate or another glass.

165 Nicholson Street, Carlton

The Best Italian Restaurants in Melbourne by Area

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Know the suburb, need the table? Start here. From CBD pasta bars and Carlton institutions to southside wine rooms, bayside trattorias and northside Sicilian fire, these are the best Italian restaurants in Melbourne by neighbourhood.

Best Italian Restaurants in Melbourne CBD & North Melbourne

Ronnie’s

Ronnie’s sits behind its Collins Street façade with New York-Italian spirit, Melbourne polish and a menu that knows nobody came here to be delicate. Vodka rigatoni, veal meatballs, bistecca, cicchetti and tiramisu do the heavy lifting, while the story runs deeper: chef Matthew Butcher created Ronnie’s in tribute to his father, a country cook with simple tastes and serious warmth. Nostalgic, generous and sharper than it first lets on.

Entry via Rialto Piazza, 525 Collins Street, Melbourne 

Il Bacaro

Il Bacaro has been holding court on Little Collins Street for 30 years, bringing Venetian discipline to a city that likes its Italian with a little night-time polish. Executive chef David Dellai keeps the brief refined but not brittle: vitello tonnato, tagliolini al limone with crab and zucchini, trout tartare with buttermilk and sambuca, and cappellacci with taleggio, corn, basil and pine nuts. White linen, sharp service and a dining room that still knows how to make the CBD feel grown-up. Oh, and a must-try Parmesan martini.

168-170 Little Collins Street, Melbourne

Marameo

Marameo is the CBD Italian restaurant for anyone who likes lunch with a little bad behaviour built in. Inside, it’s marble, velvet, spritzes and aperitivo intent, with cacio e pepe, vodka sauce, cotoletta and pasta doing the heavy lifting. It’s built for the city diner who came in for one plate and somehow found themselves considering dessert, another drink and absolutely no apology.

6 Russell Place, Melbourne

Cecconi’s

Cecconi’s doesn’t chase relevance; it has a reservation book, a very good chocolate pudding and decades of Melbourne lunches behind it. Northern Italian cooking is the house language: seafood linguine threaded with shellfish, golden veal cotoletta, Josper-grilled steaks and that molten-centred pudding with Fior di latte gelato. The Flinders Lane flagship remains the city move for business lunches, birthdays and anyone who wants Italian dining with linen, low light and no nervous reinvention.

61 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

Level 1/489 Toorak Road, Toorak

Il Solito Posto

Il Solito Posto sits below Collins Street with the stubborn charm of a restaurant people still call their usual place. Split between caffeteria and trattoria, it keeps the CBD fed on regional Italian cooking, seasonal produce and an awarded wine list, without sanding off the basement character that has understandably made it a Melbourne institution.

Basement Level, 113 Collins Street, Melbourne

Entry via George Parade

Alt Pasta Bar

Alt Pasta Bar is Niagara Lane Italian for diners who want the classics taken apart and rebuilt with a sharper Melbourne eye. Chef-owner Mino Han makes everything in-house, from pasta to preserves, then sends out seaweed pappardelle with smoky abalone, squid-ink fettuccine with spanner crab and bisque, and tiramisu reworked with chestnut, tonka bean and mascarpone. Brick-lined, moody and exacting, it trades red-sauce comfort for something stranger, darker and far more interesting.

30 Niagara Lane, Melbourne

Pepe’s Italian & Liquor

Pepe’s still does Italo-American excess particularly well: burgundy booths, martinis within easy reach and plates that make sharing increasingly theoretical. The spicy rigatoni vodka remains non-negotiable, joined by San Daniele prosciutto with stracciatella and fried pizza dough, Venetian duck trompetti and a pepperoni-heavy Pepe’s-roni. Save room for the warm pistachio bomboloni.

275-285 Exhibition Street, Melbourne 

Tippy-Tay

Tippy Tay treats Italian dinner like a party already in progress. Seafood lasagne, spanner crab fusilli, limoncello and a travelling tiramisu trolley arrive amid Amalfi colour, loud tables and a Negroni fountain that tells you fairly early what sort of evening this will be. It is generous, exuberant and wholly uninterested in becoming the restaurant for whispered conversations over one shared entrée.

101 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

+39 Pizzeria 

+39 Pizzeria is a Little Bourke Street classic for the casual Italian brief: pizza, antipasti, spritzes and a central address that keeps group-dinner politics mercifully brief. Named for Italy’s international dialling code, it keeps the appeal direct rather than dressed up: generous plates, reliable pizza and enough menu range to keep everyone at the table happy before the first Negroni lands.

362 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne CBD 

The Hardware Club

The Hardware Club takes its name seriously, set inside the former social club for Melbourne’s hardware industry, but the tools have been swapped for antipasti, handmade pasta, pizza and Italian cocktails. By day, it has the ease of a CBD trattoria; by night, the room shifts into share plates, sharp drinks and a wine list that moves between Australia and Italy. A very useful Hardware Lane address when you want the city, minus the obvious choices.

43 Hardware Lane, Melbourne

Trattoria Emilia

Down Gills Alley, Trattoria Emilia keeps its loyalties firmly in Emilia-Romagna. Gnocco fritto, prosciutto di Parma, stracciatella and tagliatelle alla bolognese arrive with the confidence of dishes that have had centuries to work themselves out. Lunch can be beautifully simple; dinner can stretch into five courses of parmesan, pasta and regional cooking. Little Collins Street feels notably further away once the first plate lands.

360 Little Collins Street, Melbourne

Bar Taralli

Bar Taralli sits on Errol Street with the feeling of somewhere that has borrowed its colours from the south of Italy: smoke, tomato, sea air, bitter greens, chilli and wine with a little volcanic temper. The cooking looks to the country’s lower half, where lunch is never merely lunch and a plate of octopus can carry half a coastline with it. Handmade pasta, seafood and rustic dishes for sharing set the pace; when Polpo alla Luciana or Bombette Pugliesi appear, follow them. North Melbourne suddenly feels much closer to Puglia.

12 Errol Street, North Melbourne

Best Italian Restaurants in Carlton & Lygon Street

Al Dente Enoteca 

A former Carlton providore makes an apt home for Al Dente Enoteca, where pantry shelves still surround diners and childhood Italian flavours shape the cooking. Andrea Vignali and Davide Bonadiman move from vitello tonnato to gnocchi alla sorrentina and cacio e pepe tortellini, with BYO keeping a pleasing trace of old Carlton in the equation. Better still, some of the ingredients can leave with you from the shelves afterwards.

161 Nicholson Street, Carlton 

Johnny’s Green Room

Johnny’s Green Room is no longer just the rooftop you hit before dinner. High above Lygon Street, it has gone full Italian terrace: 48-hour slow-ferment pizzas, gnocchi pomodoro with basil and stracciatella, zucchini fritti with whipped cod’s roe, tuna crudo, Sicilian cannoli and spritzes built for a Carlton sky. Order the mortadella fresca pizza or the taleggio patate, then let the view handle the rest.

Level 2/293-297 Lygon Street, Carlton

Johnny, Vince & Sam’s

Johnny, Vince & Sam’s turns Carlton nostalgia into a full-table sport: vinyl booths, family lore, red sauce, clattering plates and portions that refuse to behave. Created by Sooshi Mango with chef Johnny Di Francesco, it serves Italian-Australian staples with comic timing and serious dough credentials, from spaghetti and meatballs to golden cotolette and salsiccia-and-patate pizza rich with rosemary and grana padano cream. New addition Nonna’s Good Room brings a cocktail-bar chapter to the family album.

306-308 Lygon Street, Carlton 

Good Gnocchi

Good Gnocchi is crimson, retro and very aware that Melbourne has a soft spot for a bowl of comfort dressed up for date night. The menu runs through gnocchi, pasta, lasagne, antipasti, cocktails and apple pie cannoli, with enough cheek to keep the whole thing from becoming too cloy. The wagyu lasagne gnocchi is the sort of dish you order once, then spend weeks mentioning at inconvenient times.

797 Nicholson Street, Carlton North

Leonardo’s Pizza Palace

Leonardo’s Pizza Palace has the den-like charm of a 70s party that somehow found better wine. It is Carlton after dark in amber light: vintage posters, terracotta wine racks, big pizzas, modern wines and tables that get louder as the night goes on. The vodka-sauce pasta knows its audience, the fried cheese curds arrive with marinara for dunking… restraint is clearly not invited.

Come with a group, order too much, leave with cheese, sauce and orange wine doing the talking.

29 Grattan Street, Carlton 

Best Italian Restaurants in Brunswick East & Thornbury

Figlia

The Tipo 00 and Osteria Ilaria crew turned their attention to sourdough pizza at Figlia, giving the dough the same obsessive care Melbourne first knew them for in pasta form. Light, blistered bases carry combinations such as duck sausage, cavolo nero and stracciatella, backed by charred snacks, burratina and natural wine. The horseshoe bar makes an excellent place to discover that one pizza was, in fact, never going to be enough.

331 Lygon Street, Brunswick East

Umberto’s Espresso Bar 

Umberto’s Espresso Bar has kept Thornbury loyal for more than a decade, not by chasing fashion, but by feeding the neighbourhood with the sort of Italian food people come back for on autopilot. Pasta carries the pull: five-hour casarecce al ragu di vitello, orecchiette with broccoli, anchovies and chilli, plus wall-written specials that keep regulars scanning above the table. Meatballs, calamari fritti, salumi, cotoletta and tiramisu round things out, making a High Street lunch very easy to stretch into another glass.

917 High Street, Thornbury 

Best Italian Restaurants in Fitzroy & Fitzroy North

Bar Rosella 

Bar Rosella is Gertrude Street Italian built for passing plates, better bottles and a dinner that can move from handmade pasta and seasonal small plates to a 1.2-kilogram T-bone cooked Firenze-style without missing a beat. Ricotta cake handles the sweet finish, while a wine list shaped by serious sommelier credentials makes indecision part of the pleasure.

229 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy

Best Italian Restaurants in South Yarra, Toorak, Prahran & Windsor

Osteria Renata

Behind Osteria Renata’s olive-green frontage, northern Italy supplies much of the vocabulary: butter, egg-rich pasta, slow-cooked sauces and aperitivi poured before anyone has fully committed to dinner. Silk-like pasta, affogato and Victorian-grown Italian varietals keep the focus close to the table, while the Alba Room handles larger gatherings. Aperitivo has a habit of becoming dinner here. Nobody seems especially troubled by it.

436-438 High Street, Prahran 

The Alps

We’d chase The Alps’ Romana-style pizza through foul weather and worse traffic. This intimate Prahran wine bar has shifted its focus to thin, saucy pies with serious edge, helmed by Mimmo Cowie and Charley Snadden-Wilson of Clover. The Jura x Toscana lands with comté, mustard, onion, pecorino and hot honey, while the Pork & Fennel brings ’nduja into the fold. There’s still a wine-bar brain behind it all, which means the bottle in front of you may start its own argument with the pizza.

64 Commercial Road, Prahran

Studio Amaro

Studio Amaro knows its audience: Chapel Street diners who want Italian food, amaro and a room with after-dark nerve. Head chef Daniel Migliaccio moves through sourdough focaccia, tuna carpaccio, paccheri with oxtail ragu, burrata, rockmelon granita and hazelnut tartufo, with enough liqueur intelligence to justify staying past dessert. This is Italian for people who believe dinner should have a second act.

168 Chapel Street, Windsor

Bar Bianco

Bar Bianco keeps Hawksburn Village well supplied with Italian plates and very good wine, a neighbourhood address that makes one glass before dinner an increasingly loose concept. Start with gnocco fritto and culatello, kingfish crudo or half-shell scallops beneath an almond-and-herb crust, then head for pumpkin tortellini in brown butter, rigatoni all’Amatriciana or the wonderfully old-school Lasagne Della Mamma. Sicilian cannoli and tiramisu keep dessert classic.

523 Malvern Road, Toorak

Caffé e Cucina

Since 1988, Caffé e Cucina has kept Chapel Street supplied with carpaccio, linguine di mare, risotto and the particular pleasure of tables set close enough to make everybody else’s order interesting. Fashion has shifted repeatedly outside; inside, regulars still return to the classics and staff still know how to make dinner feel personal. Nearly four decades of South Yarra history are hard to manufacture.

581 Chapel Street, South Yarra

Cosi

Cosi has been feeding South Yarra since 1996, which means it has survived trends with something sturdier than novelty. The menu stays close to the classics: gnocchi alla Sorrentina, linguine marinara, cotoletta Milanese and an award-recognised wine list. It is the restaurant for anyone who wants Chapel Street Italian with memory, comfort and no need for a reinvention speech.

68 Toorak Road, South Yarra

Officina Gastronomica Italiana

Officina Gastronomica Italiana grew out of Officine Zero into something made for longer evenings, with house-made pasta, Italian artisan wines and enough bottles lining the walls to encourage a second look at the list. Heritage informs the cooking without making dinner feel stuck in the past, and dessert deserves planning, particularly the affogato and tiramisu. An underrated gem.

532-534 Malvern Road, Prahran

Rossi

Rossi is Prahran Italian with nightlife in the bloodstream. By day, the case is wood-fired pizza, pillowy gnocchi, burrata with roasted tomato coulis and the $75 Nonna’s Selection for family-style feasting. By night, the lights drop, DJs arrive and Greville Street remembers it has a pulse. Go for Wednesday gnocchi and vino, or gather a group and surrender to the room.

162 Greville Street, Prahran

Best Italian Restaurants in St Kilda, Armadale & Bayside

Cicciolina

Cicciolina has held its place on Acland Street since 1993, which makes it less a St Kilda Italian restaurant than part of the suburb’s muscle memory. The room has that rare, lived-in magnetism: art on the walls, regulars at the bar, handmade pasta, seasonal seafood and a menu that understands pleasure without fussing over it. Trends have come, gone and embarrassed themselves. Cicciolina is still here, pouring wine, feeding locals and making longevity look delicious.

130 Acland Street, St Kilda

Stokehouse Pasta & Bar

Stokehouse Pasta & Bar is the sand-level St Kilda Italian restaurant beneath one of Melbourne’s great seaside names, turning the old Pontoon space into a breezier pasta-and-sea air proposition. The menu keeps the coast close: spinach and ricotta tortellini, pesto lasagne, crab and chilli spaghetti, raw crudo, Murray cod, Cape Grim sirloin and focaccia with bagna càuda. End with the tiramisu, shaped in tribute to the Stokehouse Bombe Alaska, because family history tastes better with mascarpone.

30 Jacka Boulevard, St Kilda

Rina’s

Rina’s is the Armadale Italian restaurant for people who like dinner to arrive with a little trust fall. Its candlelit set menu changes with small farms and market finds, so prosciutto and melon, spaghetti cacio e pepe and primavera tart might appear one evening, then a fennel-and-black-pepper pork chop the next. There is intimacy without ceremony and a refreshing faith in whatever happens to be best that week. Ice buckets, importantly, are treated as serious infrastructure.

857 High Street, Armadale

Abbiocco

Abbiocco gives Highett a bayside Italian restaurant with handmade pasta, olive-toned interiors and enough dish detail to justify the drive. The menu’s stronger moves include bucatini with caramelised onion carbonara, Shark Bay prawn ravioli, paccheri with Beechworth pork belly alla Norcina, charred tomato arancini with smoked caciotta and a rum baba with whipped Nutella. Not shy, not dull, very much worth booking south of the obvious postcodes.

501 Highett Road, Highett

Buono Restaurant & Bar

Parkdale has its own Italian night out at Buono, with cocktails, seafood pasta and a loyal local crowd doing away with any suggestion that bayside diners need to head north for dinner. Twice-cooked octopus with Italian pork sausage and chickpea purée is worth attention, as is house-made scialatielli slicked with crustacean sauce. Desserts come from an Italian pâtissier. That final detail should govern how much pasta you order beforehand.

198 Como Parade West, Parkdale

Best Italian Restaurants in South Melbourne, Albert Park & Middle Park

Pizzateca Lupa

Pizzateca Lupa turns a South Melbourne Market corner into a Roman lunch plan with teeth. Brothers Lino and Gabriele Torre keep the brief focused: pizza in teglia by the slice, classic tonda made to order, fried artichokes, antipasti and Pastificio Liguori pasta. Go for the Norma with fried eggplant, amatriciana fusilli or carbonara tubettone, then pretend you only came for a quick market bite.

South Melbourne Market, 116 Cecil Street, South Melbourne

Park Street Pasta & Wine

Handmade pasta is the whole point at Park Street Pasta & Wine, and the kitchen has little interest in overexplaining why. Italy’s regions supply the map and Victorian produce fills in the detail, from veal and wild rabbit agnolotti with sage butter to Spring Bay mussel tagliatelle with heirloom zucchini. There are few greater South Melbourne pleasures than watching a plate of fatto a mano disappear faster than intended.

268 Park Street, South Melbourne

WoodsYard

Near Albert Park Lake, WoodsYard pairs naturally fermented, wood-fired pizza with snacks and a drinks list capable of extending a casual dinner by several hours. Guanciale, chilli, honey and buffalo mozzarella find their way across the pizzas, while oysters and anchovy toast with salsa verde take care of the opening rounds. The dirty martini is also essential tasting.

74 Eastern Road, South Melbourne

Best Italian Restaurants in Richmond & Cremorne

Baby

Baby is Richmond’s reliable modern pizzeria: sleek, energetic, and still useful when group-dinner democracy starts to fail. The menu features more than 20 seasonal pizzas, handmade mozzarella, prawns, prosciutto cotto, burrata, and calamari fritti, with happy hour doing much of the crowd-control work. From the Chin Chin crew, it understands scale without making the food feel like an afterthought.

631-633 Church Street, Richmond

Casa Mariotti

Casa Mariotti puts a Roman accent on Swan Street, spreading spritzes, Negronis, easy reds and Italian plates across several levels. Dinner works best as a slow accumulation rather than a procession of courses, with aperitivo logic governing the evening and balcony seats providing the prize position. By the second Negroni, Swan Street feels pleasingly far away.

258 Swan Street, Richmond

Amatrice Rooftop

Ten floors above Cremorne, Amatrice Rooftop looks to Lazio while Melbourne handles the view. Its name nods to the home of amatriciana, and the menu follows through with mezze maniche alla carbonara, veal cotoletta, crisp lasagne bites and tiramisu. Former Osteria Ilaria chef Vincenzo Di Giovanniello keeps the pasta exact. Cremorne below, Rome on the fork.

Level 10/16 Stephenson Street, Cremorne 

Best Italian Restaurants in Kew, Balwyn North, Malvern & Glen Iris

Mister Bianco

Mister Bianco’s Cotham Road home lets its Sicilian instincts stretch out. The Kew Italian restaurant moves through wood-fired bread, porchetta, steak, oysters with watermelon granita, potato rosti with salted cod and saffron spaghettini with prawns and bottarga. La Sala handles private dining, while Bianchetto, the adjoining bar, adds risotto nights and a cinema pairing for locals who like dinner with a subplot.

26-28 Cotham Road, Kew 

Lulu

A few doors down from Essie, Lulu feels like Malvern stumbled across one of London’s very good neighbourhood Italians and decided not to tell the rest of Melbourne. Burgundy walls, American oak and a curved steel bar wrap around a room of barely 45 seats, with handmade pasta, blistered pizza and an Italian-heavy wine list doing the rest. Dining here on a Tuesday is an elite move: $30 gets you scotch fillet, fries and salad. Otherwise, take a bar stool, order whatever pasta is running and live la dolce vita.

11 Station Street, Malvern

Tesoro Gastronomia

Tesoro Gastronomia is a Balwyn North Italian restaurant with more bite than its suburban address lets on. The kitchen moves through Roman pinsa, handmade pasta and elegant small plates, from octopus carpaccio to paccheri amatriciana, while the Italian sausage, broccolini and chilli pinsa is the one to circle. When the Giro d’Italia nights are running, the menu travels through a different Italian region each month, giving regulars a reason to keep the calendar close.

280 Doncaster Road, Balwyn North

Grazia

Grazia occupies a heritage-listed Glen Iris address of terrazzo, marble and atrium light, with family recipes doing the heavier work once everyone sits down. House-made focaccia, fior di zucca, grilled prawns with salsa verde and vitello tonnato can lead into wild mushroom tortellini, Roman-style pizza and porchetta. The classics are treated as living things here, not artefacts behind glass, which is exactly as they should be.

159 Burke Road, Glen Iris

Best Italian Restaurants in Ascot Vale, Moonee Ponds, Strathmore & Footscray

Via Vale Trattoria

Ascot Vale has gained a decidedly dressed-up trattoria, complete with chandeliers, white tablecloths and a menu built for long dinners. Via Vale moves from duck and porcini arancini and bluefin tuna crudo to lobster squid-ink linguine, Red Hill truffle risotto and Barolo-braised beef cheek. The cooking is ambitious without losing sight of comfort, while Sunday lunch offers an excuse to order focaccia, osso buco and tiramisu before the week begins again.

385-387 Mt Alexander Road, Ascot Vale

Harley & Rose

Harley & Rose is the westside Italian favourite that never needed to shout across town to be heard. The Footscray room runs on wood-fired pizza, seasonal pasta, sharp little sides and a tiramisu with serious local mythology. It is casual and clever, the place for a Friday night table when everyone wants the same thing but would rather not admit that thing is pizza, wine and something sweet enough to end the argument.

572 Barkly Street, West Footscray

Borgo Food & Wine

Union Road gets a little Abruzzo and Piemonte at Borgo Food & Wine, beginning with house-made salumi, focaccia, burrata and octopus salad before vitello tonnato, agnolotti del plin and slow-cooked meats enter the conversation. Italian bottles naturally follow. Ascot Vale locals have little reason to surrender this table willingly, though anyone crossing the river will understand why once the agnolotti arrives.

152 Union Road, Ascot Vale

Toni

Toní Pasta & Wine has handed Moonee Ponds exactly the kind of Saturday-night Italian it was ready for: handmade pasta, wood-fired pizza, spritzes and Italo-disco on Hall Street. Tagliatelle and a glass of red can remain a simple dinner if required, although the atmosphere has other ideas once the evening gets moving. Moonee Ponds is clearly done waiting for the inner north’s permission.

21-31 Hall Street, Moonee Ponds

Cicchetti on Napier

Cicchetti on Napier is Strathmore’s answer to the date-night question locals were tired of driving elsewhere to solve. Named for Venice’s snack-sized drinking food, it moves neatly from burrata, goat’s cheese balls and kingfish ceviche to osso buco pappardelle, bistecca alla Fiorentina and chicken cotoletta. The wedge salad with truffle pecorino is a nice little flex. The Negroni is not optional, merely sensible.

283 Napier Street, Strathmore

Paesino Pizzeria

Keilor’s Paesino Pizzeria has the red gingham, the wood-fired oven and the neighbourhood confidence of a place that knows exactly what it is. There are 16 pizzas on the menu, from classics to louder house signatures, plus angioletti, fennel-citrus salad and a Wednesday deal that turns dining out on a weeknight into an essential mission. Our order is the Vodkarella, with mozzarella, vodka sauce, garlic and basil; rich, saucy, a little ridiculous and all the better for it.

Sitchu Tip: If the pork-chop cotoletta appears on the specials board, take the hint.

12D Kennedy Street, Keilor

The Best New Italian Restaurants in Melbourne

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Julietta

From the Mamasita team, Julietta is South Yarra’s new Negroni-and-pasta hideaway, with chef Jimmy Garside working fresh in-house pasta into cacio e pepe fazzoletti, vodka rigatoni with ’nduja and prawn ravioli. Thirty-five seats, Italian-leaning wines and a dedicated Negroni list make it feel instantly lived-in, not launched.

220 Toorak Road, South Yarra

Roma

Roma arrives on Collins Street with the Eternal City’s rough edges intact: marble altar table, 100-year-old Italian fixtures, vintage lamps and checkered floors beneath a Beverly Hills Hotel-inspired ceiling. Executive chef Matt Wilkinson makes Roman quinto quarto the headline, with pajata, coratella, vitello tonnato, and sharp seasonal pastas, all paired with Lazio-minded wines. Con Christopoulos, Giovanni Patane and family steer it with old-school hospitality and a rowdy local pulse for diners who prefer their Rome with bite.

120 Collins Street, Melbourne

The Spaghetti Club

The Spaghetti Club turns Swan Street into a Southern Italian family album, drawing from co-founder Lucas Gugliandolo’s nonno’s recipe notebook. Chef Michael Fleming reworks the classics through lasagne layered with béchamel, provolone-stuffed involtini, spaghetti vongole with lemon and bottarga, plus Negronis, spritzes and Italian lagers for Richmond feasting.

52 Swan Street, Richmond

Garfield Pizzeria

Garfield Pizzeria has given Lygon Street a Tokyo-style pizza counter that cares rather less about Neapolitan orthodoxy than much of the neighbourhood. Cacio e pepe pizza, the Garfield special and truffle-parmesan potatoes make the menu worth reading past the usual suspects, while counter service keeps the whole operation pleasingly immediate. For anyone experiencing margherita fatigue, Carlton has supplied an answer.

293/297 Lygon Street, Carlton

Cambio Vita

Cambio Vita is Malvern’s new neighbourhood Italian for pasta, pizza and easy Glenferrie Road dinners. Chef Stefano Di Lella’s menu keeps comfort close, with rigatoncini alla Norma, roasted eggplant sauce, whipped ricotta, wood-fired pizza and seasonal pasta specials. It is suburban Italian with heart, not inner-city imitation.

99 Glenferrie Road, Malvern

Super Norma

Super Norma began as a three-month pop-up in a former Rathdowne Street grocer and then, sensibly, refused to leave. Marco Salzano and Luca Muscato channel Naples-to-Sicily memories into pasta with real sauce-stained spirit: eggplant-rich Super Norma, scarpariello, cacio e pepe, vongole and a slow-cooked Ragù Napoletano. The room is tiny, the records are Italo-disco, and the pasta lands in cardboard boxes when you need it fast. Carlton got lucky.

140 Rathdowne Street, Carlton

Times New Roman

Times New Roman feels a little like arriving at an Italian grandmother’s house after somebody has stocked the bar unusually well. Share tables, booths, pasta, tin fish and snacks fill the Brunswick East space, with martinis nearby and prices that leave room for another plate. Open Thursday to Sunday, it has found the sweet spot between neighbourhood hangout and first-date address without making a speech about either.

66 Lygon Street, Brunswick East

Still hungry? Keep following the sauce trail with our guides to Melbourne’s best pizza, wine bars and cocktail spots. After all, one excellent bowl of pasta has a funny way of turning into another booking.