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Buon Appetito: The Best Italian Restaurants in Melbourne
Melbourne’s best Italian restaurants for handmade pasta, wood-fired pizza, old-school institutions, regional trattorias, long lunches and very good wine.
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.
In This Guide
- The 12 Essential Italian Restaurants in Melbourne
- The Best Italian Restaurants in Melbourne by Area
- Melbourne CBD & North Melbourne
- Carlton & Lygon Street
- Brunswick East & Thornbury
- Fitzroy & Fitzroy North
- South Yarra, Toorak, Prahran & Windsor
- St Kilda, Armadale & Bayside
- South Melbourne, Albert Park & Middle Park
- Richmond & Cremorne
- Kew, Balwyn North & Glen Iris
- Ascot Vale, Moonee Ponds, Strathmore & Footscray
- The New Openings
The 12 Essential Italian Restaurants in Melbourne
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 is Carlton’s grown-up Italian benchmark, regional, restrained and deeply sure of itself. The menu follows the Italian meal as it should be: antipasto, pasta, main, dessert, with a wine list that remembers Italy is twenty regions, not one red sauce. Refined without stiffness, it remains one of Melbourne’s clearest cases for Italian dining with real depth.
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 the cooler, broader sibling to Tipo 00, less pasta temple, more modern Italian dining room with a European wine brain. The food moves beyond the obvious without losing sight of pleasure: paccheri, seafood, bitter leaves, bright sauces, clever snacks, desserts that know restraint from boredom. It is a CBD date-night banker, a wine-led dinner plan and one of Melbourne’s best arguments for staying in the city after work.
367 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne
Lagotto, Fitzroy North
Lagotto is Fitzroy North’s neighbourhood Italian flex, the room locals would rather keep to themselves. Seasonal, assured and deeply likeable, it moves from oysters and crudo to handmade pasta and swordfish cotoletta without fuss. When saffron spaghetti with bluefin tuna, bottarga and wood sorrel is on, order like you mean it.
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 has fresh charge under Karen Martini and Michael Sapountsis, with the South Yarra stalwart now moving through cicchetti, carpaccio, handmade pasta, Josper cooking and Barolo-lined lunches. It has the bones of an institution and the spark of somewhere newly awake. For a long lunch, a sharp date or a serious bottle, South Yarra knows where to go.
44 Toorak Road, South Yarra
Capitano, Carlton
Capitano sits between red-sauce clubhouse and clever neighbourhood trattoria, which is exactly why it works. Fermented pizza bases, a Bar Liberty-minded wine list, amaro-laced desserts and a bone-in veal cutlet big enough to change the table’s plans keep the room loose, generous and just a little dangerous.
421 Rathdowne Street, Carlton
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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
Bar Olo is Scopri’s Piemonte-minded wine bar, with wood-panelled intimacy, Barolo in its bones and enough regional detail to make Carlton feel briefly northern Italian. Anthony Scutella and Alison Foley steer the room toward vitello tonnato, prawn tramezzini, pappardelle ripiene and agnolotti del plin, backed by Piemontese wines, back-vintage pours and Coravin service. Compact, grown-up and deeply romantic, it turns dinner into a negotiation between one more glass and one more plate.
165 Nicholson Street, Carlton
The Best Italian Restaurants in Melbourne by Area
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 Italian & Liquor is Italo-American excess in burgundy booths: Sinatra, Negronis, spicy rigatoni vodka, tuna crudo, stracciatella and pizza built for late nights on Exhibition Street. The Il Tricolore, with Piennolo tomato, eggplant, basil pesto and stracciatella, is the one to clock, though the martini deserves equal attention. It’s red sauce with a raised eyebrow, big portions, low light and absolutely no interest in restraint.
275-285 Exhibition Street, Melbourne
Tippy-Tay
Tippy Tay is not where you go for a hushed conversation about regional restraint. It is where Amalfi colour, seafood lasagne, spanner crab fusilli, tiramisu trolley, limoncello and a Negroni fountain all decide subtlety can take the night off. The food is generous, the room is loud in all the right ways, and the whole thing understands that Italian dining is sometimes meant to arrive with confetti in its pockets.
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
Trattoria Emilia sits down Gills Alley like a northern Italian secret with flour on its hands. The kitchen keeps close to Emilia-Romagna, where gnocco fritto, prosciutto di Parma, stracciatella and tagliatelle alla bolognese arrive with old-country discipline rather than fuss. Lunch can be quick and deeply satisfying; dinner might unfurl into a five-course tasting menu of parmesan, pasta and regional restraint. Rustic, exacting and tucked just far enough from Little Collins Street to feel earned.
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
Al Dente Enoteca turns a former Carlton providore into a small Italian dining room with pantry shelves still part of the plot. Andrea Vignali and Davide Bonadiman keep the cooking close to home, drawing on childhood flavours and classic comforts: vitello tonnato, gnocchi alla sorrentina and cacio e pepe tortellini. The BYO detail is a nice old-school flex, while the chance to buy the ingredients from the shelves makes the whole place feel half restaurant, half very well-stocked Italian kitchen.
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, and restraint is frankly 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
Figlia sits where Lygon meets Victoria, from the Tipo 00 and Osteria Ilaria crew, with sourdough pizza given the same precision they once lavished on pasta. The bases arrive light, blistered and full of character, carrying duck sausage, cavolo nero, stracciatella or whatever else the kitchen is using to make a simple idea feel newly persuasive. Chargrilled snacks, burratina with basil pesto, natural wines and a horseshoe bar made for one-more-slice decisions seal the deal. Modern Melbourne Italian, with fire in its bones.
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
Osteria Renata is a Prahran Italian restaurant with a northern Italian accent: butter, egg pasta, slow-cooked sauces and aperitivi that make restraint seem rather beside the point. Behind the olive-green façade, silk-like pasta, affogato and Victorian-grown Italian varietals set the tone, while the Alba Room handles birthdays, Christmas parties and group dinners with a little extra ceremony.
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 puts Guy Grossi’s southside return through a Ligurian lens, sending Hawksburn Village coastal with half-shell scallops in almond crust, cured kingfish with bay-leaf oil and slow-cooked lamb ragu through rigatoni. Tiramisu and Ligurian-style cannoli, laced with ricotta, olive oil and amaretti, close the meal with a little sun in the seams. Italian, generous, and far more transporting than a Malvern Road address has any right to be.
523 Malvern Road, Toorak
Caffé e Cucina
Since 1988, Caffé e Cucina has kept Chapel Street supplied with carpaccio, linguine di mare, risotto and close-table intimacy restaurants spend years trying to fake. Classic rather than fashionable, it still has memory in the walls, regulars in the room and enough old South Yarra romance to make reinvention feel unnecessary.
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 is Prahran’s bigger, dinner-ready evolution of Officine Zero, with house-made pasta, Italian artisan wines and a wall of bottles that says the evening may not end quickly. The room has rustic bones, the cooking has heritage at its centre, and dessert deserves space, particularly the affogato and tiramisu. A useful address for pasta, wine and South Yarra-adjacent dinner plans.
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. The candlelit set menu changes with small farms and market finds, so one night might bring prosciutto and melon, spaghetti cacio e pepe and primavera tart, the next a fennel-and-black-pepper pork chop with enough conviction to quiet the table. It’s seasonal, intimate and refreshingly direct, with ice buckets 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
Buono Restaurant & Bar is Parkdale’s Italian night out with cocktails, seafood pasta and enough local loyalty to make it more than a bayside backup plan. Twice-cooked octopus with Italian pork sausage and chickpea purée is the savoury hook, while house-made scialatielli in crustacean sauce gives the pasta section some real weight. Desserts come from an Italian pâtissier, which is exactly how one should finish.
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
Park Street Pasta & Wine is South Melbourne’s house of fatto a mano, where handmade pasta does not need a manifesto to make its case. The menu moves through Italy’s regions, with local produce within easy reach, from veal and wild rabbit agnolotti with sage butter to Spring Bay mussel tagliatelle with heirloom zucchini. It is measured, elegant, and very good at reminding you why handmade pasta still matters.
268 Park Street, South Melbourne
WoodsYard
WoodsYard sits near Albert Park Lake with sourdough pizza, small plates and the sort of drinks list that can turn a casual dinner into a longer negotiation with the night. The pizzas are naturally fermented, wood-fired and topped with guanciale, chilli, honey and buffalo mozzarella, while the snacks range from oysters to anchovy toast with salsa verde. The dirty martini is not an afterthought.
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 is a Roman-leaning Italian restaurant and bar on Richmond’s Swan Street, spread across multiple levels with spritzes, Negronis, easy reds and balcony seats worth angling for. The menu suits grazing into dinner rather than marching through neat courses, with the aperitivo spirit firmly in charge. It has that excellent Richmond quality: part trattoria, part drinking den, all movement.
258 Swan Street, Richmond
Amatrice Rooftop
Amatrice Rooftop is a Cremorne Italian restaurant with Roman bones, a Level 10 address and a view that lets the city do some of the talking. Named for the Lazio town that gave us amatriciana, it leans into the region with mezze maniche alla carbonara, veal cotoletta, crisp lasagne bites, and tiramisu to finish. Vincenzo Di Giovanniello, previously of Osteria Ilaria, keeps the pasta sharp, and the room elevated — it’s la dolce vita with a Cremorne accent.
Level 10/16 Stephenson Street, Cremorne
Best Italian Restaurants in Kew, Balwyn North & 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
Lulu is a Malvern Italian restaurant with burgundy walls, a steel bar and a menu that knows how to make a first impression without making a fuss. Start with stracciatella, burnt fig and hazelnut, then move to spanner crab linguine with prawn bisque, comté croquettes or blistered pizza with a glass of Fiano. Small, sultry and sharply put together, it turns Station Street into a very good dinner plan.
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 gives Glen Iris a heritage-listed Italian room with terrazzo, marble, atrium light and a menu that respects the classics without embalming them. Start with house-made focaccia, fior di zucca, grilled prawns with salsa verde or vitello tonnato, then move into wild mushroom tortellini, Roman-style pizza, porchetta and dessert. It is family-recipe Italian with enough polish cut from the copy and enough substance on the plate.
159 Burke Road, Glen Iris
Best Italian Restaurants in Ascot Vale, Moonee Ponds, Strathmore & Footscray
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
Borgo Food & Wine turns Union Road into a small Italian village kitchen, with Abruzzo and Piemonte doing much of the talking. Start with house-made salumi, focaccia, burrata, or octopus salad, then move on to vitello tonnato, agnolotti del plin, and slow-cooked meats, with an Italian-leaning glass nearby. Intimate, regional and astutely certain of itself, this Ascot Vale restaurant is worth crossing the river for.
152 Union Road, Ascot Vale
Toni
Toní Pasta & Wine has handed Moonee Ponds a new Italian mood: handmade pasta, wood-fired pizza, spritzes, Italo-disco and a Hall Street dining room with Saturday night in its bloodstream. The brief is generous and lively, without tipping into parody. Come for tagliatelle and a glass of red, stay because 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 the sort of Wednesday deal that turns a weeknight into a very good idea. 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 Italian Restaurants in Melbourne: The New Guard
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 woken up Lygon Street with Tokyo-style pizza, counter-service ease and a menu that refuses to worship the margherita. Think cacio e pepe pizza, the Garfield special, truffle-parmesan potatoes and a quick-hit Carlton setting made for cravings, offbeat dates and anyone bored with the usual dough sermon.
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 is Brunswick East’s cocktail bar at grandma’s house, which is to say: share tables, booths, pasta, tin fish, snacks and just enough oddball charm to make 66 Lygon Street feel newly awake. Open Thursday to Sunday, it trades in affordability, first dates and the Italian-adjacent pleasure of not overexplaining itself. Less red-sauce institution, more new-wave neighbourhood room with a martini close by.
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.
