delicious.100: St Kilda’s Cafe Di Stasio is one of Melbourne’s best restaurants.

At Cafe Di Stasio it always seems to be sundown with light raking the room through venetians and white jacketed waiters ferrying dishes to linen-draped tables.

Crab angel hair pasta. Pictures: Rebecca Michael.

PUSH open the big hand-shape doors at the grungy end of St Kilda’s Fitzroy Street and you enter Ronnie Di Stasio’s world.

Here, at Cafe Di Stasio, it always seems to be sundown with light raking the room through venetians and white jacketed waiters ferrying dishes to linen-draped tables.

Di Stasio is not always present — maitre d’ Mallory Wall is more likely to be overseeing service — but his devotion informs every aspect of his eponymous restaurant, from the carefully chosen music and sculpted masks on the walls to the fine house wine (from his Yarra Valley vineyard), and the way some pasta is served: a tad firmer than al dente.

St Kilda’s Cafe Di Stasio.

The cooking here has always been impeccable. Still is. At a recent lunch, angel hair pasta (tagliolini) came furled with spanner crab, a perfect fillet of turbot swam with a perfect pea salad, and roast duck — its skin burnished to a coppery sheen — was pure luxe with spaetzle.

The “slow food seasonal lunch” (two courses, a glass of wine and Lavazza coffee for $40) is good value. Seventeen dollars for a litre of Acqua Panna mineral water? Not so much.

Don’t forget, there’s a bar next door, well suited to coffee or a digestive. You might find Ronnie there.

Must eat dish: angel hair pasta with spanner crab

CAFE DI STASIO

31 Fitzroy St, St Kilda.

Ph: 9525 3999

distasio.com.au

Cuisine: Italian

Chef: Steven Rofe

Price: between $41 and $80 a person for two courses, food only

Bookings: yes

Open: daily noon-3pm and 6pm-11pm

Instagram: @bardistasio

This restaurant was ranked the 34th best restaurant in Victoria in the 2016 edition of the delicious.100.