10 of Melbourne’s best Italian restaurants (and how to dine for less at each)
Find $16 margherita pizza, weekend lunch menus with endless focaccia and drinks, and a date-night deal with a price that’ll have you feeling loved up.
Melbourne is blessed with so many Italian restaurants, it can be hard to know where to head for your next bowl of tagliatelle. Helpfully, The Age Good Food Guide 2025 tasted and rated everything from neighbourhood pizzerias to special places where the white tablecloths are as stiff as the negronis.
These spots below showcase how rich and diverse Italian dining is in Victoria, but they’re all united by one thing: an excellent deal. Find $16 margherita pizza, weekend lunch menus including endless focaccia and drinks, and a date-night menu with a price to get you feeling loved up.
Abbiocco
The deal: Visit on a Friday for lunch, when a bowl of pasta and a glass of wine is $35.
What the Good Food Guide says:
You wouldn’t know it going by the look of this chic diner, but there’s a pasta marathon going on inside most nights. Mains come in mighty portions and – other than a single steak – are pure carb. Some challenge tradition, such as spaghetti coated in velvety mussel emulsions with jolts of ’nduja. Others are more familiar, such as a giant gorgonzola raviolo with pickled walnut vinaigrette to counter its cheesy filling. Gleaming terrazzo floors are matched by polished service and a swish Italian-focused wine list. No wonder tables are snapped up.
501 Highett Road, Highett, abbioccopasta.com
Alta Trattoria
The deal: Dine at lunch and you can BYO for $25 corkage.
What the Good Food Guide says:
A portal to Piedmont just off Brunswick Street, Alta makes pasta that is not to be missed. Tajarin, the region’s egg-rich noodles, freight an allspice-scented veal ragu. Hazelnuts and pine mushrooms tumble with spindle-shaped gnocchi. But there’s also brandacujun – the rustic snack of salt cod, potato, lemon and olive – and a barolo situation that’s best described as serious. Prop at the bar or find an intimate nook.
Rear, 274 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, altatrattoria.com
Bau Bau
The deal: Half-price oysters, 5pm to 6pm, daily
What the Good Food Guide says:
Even if you’re a regular, it’s impossible to get bored here. Produce comes from the owners’ market garden near Daylesford, prompting a menu rewrite every couple of weeks. The menu is fixed-price but with four or five choices for each course. You might find regional dishes such as cacciucco, the tomato-based Tuscan fish stew, or tortellini in brodo, which are upgraded to five large tortellini half-submerged in a clear, herbaceous chicken soup.
18 Ranelagh Drive, Mount Eliza, baubaudining.com.au
Bottarga
The deal: Get discounted drinks and A-plus snacks from 4.30pm to 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday. Choose from $16 cocktails, $15 house wines and $8 Messina lager to go with a $35 chef’s menu of up to six small bites.
What the Good Food Guide says:
Bare concrete and black marble set the stage for Italian-born chef-owner Federico Bizzaro, who interlaces Asian and Australian flavours with those of his motherland at this hatted restaurant. Silky scallop crudo pairs with a shock of hot-pink whipped karasumi (Japanese dried mullet roe). Fennel and Geraldton wax punctuate fresh burrata, and gorgonzola gelato is teamed with cherry jam and shortcrust chocolate pastry.
3/124 Martin Street, Brighton, bottarga.com.au
Enoteca Boccaccio
The deal: BYO is available at lunch Friday and Saturday, and dinner Tuesday to Thursday, with corkage of $20 a bottle.
What the Good Food Guide says:
Every seat in this hatted wine bar is hot property. Squeeze onto a stool at the bar crowded with Balwyn’s svelte loafer-wearing dads, or head to the slinky space down the back for more languorous dining. Calamari arrives smoke-kissed; charcoal-grilled duck boasts sticky skin and deep-pink meat; and bowls of buttery pappardelle are strewn with soulful rabbit ragu. Around you, concrete, steel and marble inject new into the classics.
Level 1, 1046 Burke Road, Balwyn, enoteca.boccaccio.com.au
Figlia
The deal: Weekdays, come for aperitivo hour (5pm to 6pm), which includes snacks from $3.50, pizza margherita for $16 and deals on drinks, including $9 mini martinis.
What the Good Food Guide says:
Chef Andreas Papadakis asserts his carb-king status at Figlia, the pizza-forward sibling to his city pasta bar Tipo 00. All sourdough chew, his Napoli-style pies are so light they could levitate to tables if waiters ever dropped the ball. Toppings bring unexpected delights, such as pepperberry sharpening a classic salami and fior di latte. Bouncy quail skewers get a lick of sweet-sour balsamic glaze, and fat pucks of gnocchi in tomato-tarragon sauce deserve their place as the menu’s sole pasta.
335 Lygon Street, Brunswick East, figlia.com.au
Marchesa
The deal: This country trattoria offers two courses for $65 whenever it’s open, even on weekends.
What the Good Food Guide says:
For five years, this modest space was the beloved Spaghetti Bar. Then co-owner and chef Daniel Whelan joined forces with Daniel Saligari from Midnight Starling next door to open this peach and pistachio-toned charmer. In a happily humming room, Whelan serves Italian food that’s peasant at heart but executed with finesse. For vitello tonnato, the veal is roasted (not poached) and dressed with a luscious confit tuna mayonnaise and crisp capers. A single large raviolo balloons with hare, pork and liver filling. This is food you’ll still be thinking about weeks later.
58 Piper Street, Kyneton, marchesa.com.au
Osteria Renata
The deal: On weekdays, lunch at Renata might be a $22 pasta, a round of $2 oysters, and a $12 limoncello Sgroppino to finish.
What the Good Food Guide says:
When did pasta get so chic? Osteria Renata’s glam clientele, lounging on olive-leather benches with limoncello and blood-orange spritzes, don’t seem like the carb-loading types. Perhaps the radiatori alla vodka is the draw, its intense
tomato sauce clinging to corkscrew-like crevices. Fresh mint provides a welcome
reprieve to triangular pasta pillows filled with braised lamb shoulder. A smart wine list includes a rotating list of well-priced Italian varietals on tap.
436-438 High Street, Prahran, osteriarenata.com.au
Paesino
The deal: Every Wednesday is date night, where you get any pizza, fries or salad, dessert, and two glasses of wine for $80 dine-in. Or choose takeaway, with two pizzas for $40.
What the Good Food Guide says:
The kitchen team at this homely pizzeria treat their 48-hour, double-fermented dough with religious intensity. See it stretching across the menu from aperitivo angioletti (fried dough served with fresh cherry tomatoes) to dessert zeppole (sugar-dusted doughnuts). As for pizza, try the Johnny Mozzarella, which subs out sugo for garlicky cream to create a milky margherita, or the carbonara-inspired Connie Carbone, which comes with rendered pancetta and a suitably rich yolky sauce.
12D Kennedy Street, Keilor, paesinopizzeria.com.au
Studio Amaro
The deal: On weekends, a $76 set lunch menu includes 11 dishes, unlimited focaccia and drinks for two hours.
What the Good Food Guide says:
If Studio 54 and an old-school trattoria fell in love and had a baby, this would be the result. A dressed-to-impress crowd crams into corduroy-upholstered booths in a room enveloped by golden mood lighting. Sourdough focaccia is the perfect wingman for tuna carpaccio. Frilly campanelle buddy up to a sophisticated ragu of milk-braised pork with a spicy hint of ’nduja. There’s no resisting the lure of the veneer-walled basement bar, where DJ sets encourage you to have just one more Nero Spritz – made with amaro, naturally.
168 Chapel Street, Windsor, studioamaro.au
The Age Good Food Guide 2025 is on sale for $19.95 from newsagents, supermarkets and at thestore.com.au. It features more than 500 Victorian venues.