Getting a pizza the action in Little Italy

Slowly, but surely, Melbourne’s storied restaurant strip of Lygon Street in Carlton is morphing from a caricature of Little Italy into something much closer to the real deal.

Restaurateur Ronnie Di Stasio and Mallory Wall in the courtyard that will soon be part of his pizzeria in Melbournes Italian heartland of Carlton.

Slowly, but surely, Melbourne’s storied restaurant strip of Lygon Street in Carlton is morphing from a caricature of Little Italy into something much closer to the real deal.

And if you need any proof, the imminent arrival of one of the city’s best — and best-known — Italian restaurateurs, Ronnie Di Stasio, will almost certainly give the strip’s modern renaissance a serious boost.

Di Stasio has just picked up the keys to a space he intends to turn into a pizzeria, his latest business venture at the heart of what has been known for more than a century as Melbourne’s Italian strip.

In reality, Lygon Street came to reflect a slightly cliched vision of Italian-ness over the past 30 years. But that is changing, and Di Stasio wants to be a part of the evolution.

He plans to have Pizzeria Di Stasio open by March, and his landlords are the Valmorbida family, one of Melbourne’s most influential Italian dynasties in media and commerce, who spent a fortune redeveloping their King & Godfree Lygon Street site, creating a multi-tiered Milanese-style food and wine emporium that reopened in 2019.

And while many of the old-school scaloppine and raffia-bottle Chianti trattorias continue to find custom, they’re under threat from a newer breed that includes Agostino, DOC and Carlton Wine Room.

“My young adult life was formed in Carlton,” says Di Stasio. “Cafe L’Alba, Jimmy Watson’s, Genevieve’s. They all contributed to what I’m now putting into place, and those memories are very clear in my mind.

“So Carlton has always had a siren call for me; this site and location has always spoken to me. I love its Italian mood and the connection with (the late) Carlo Valmorbida who was an absolute mentor … I can still hear his voice.”

Di Stasio says he spent two years trying to convince a close Italian friend to do something with the space that he has leased, off Faraday Street but with Lygon Street frontage.

“But fear is a powerful thing, and he couldn’t take the leap of faith. So now (partner) Mallory and I have grabbed the opportunity … opportunity knocks — you grab it when you can, now more than ever.”

Di Stasio adopted the (then) incredibly unfashionable suburb of St Kilda for his first solo restaurant in 1985 after success in the CBD with Rosati and business partner/fashion designer Piero Gesualdi.

Remarkably, it remains chic and relevant.

In 2019, he opened his second restaurant, Citta, spending a considerable sum to create a restaurant that has won awards for its architecture and design. He has an Italian-style stand-up patisserie planned for a new building going up in Melbourne’s Spring Street, hopefully in 2021.

But for all his career in restaurants, the red sauce/gingham cliches of Lygon Street have been anathema for the Thornbury-born son of Italian immigrants, who started their Australian life at the Bonegilla Migrant Camp in Victoria.

The restaurateur is an aesthete with a passion for contemporary art and design.

His pizzeria will be conceived by the same architect (Di Ritter, of Hassell) who created Citta and feature the work of his friend, artist Reko Rennie, whose video installation is a feature of the city restaurant. His St Kilda “cafe” is known for its collection of Bill Henson’s work.

With roots in the villages around Naples, the home of pizza, a pizzeria is a logical extension for Di Stasio, and he knows all the great pizza restaurants of Naples, Rome and Milan. He hopes his pizzeria will be its own thing.

“Naples is Naples, and it’s energy is in my blood,” he says.

“But I’m not about imitation.”