Melbourne’s Italian dining Disneyland
Delmonte
Cnr Faraday and Lygon St, Carlton
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Welcome to Melbourne’s Italian Disneyland– a place where you can pretend you’re in Rome while eating as much pasta and prosciutto as your tummy will allow.
Delmonte is a new restaurant inside the former King and Godfree deli on Lygon St, Carlton. It’s run by the Valmorbida family, who aren’t short of a buck or business venture.
The restaurant is the final piece of a mega, two-year renovation on the historic site. Now the 120 seater venue joins siblings Johnny’s Green Room, Pidapipo gelateria and Garfield pizzeria on the famous Carlton corner.
Once an Italian grocer in the 80s and 90s, the ground floor space has evolved over the years. It’s now a fully-fledged restaurant headed up by Melbourne’s Italian queen Karen Martini and her brigade of next-gen chefs. She appointed Mark Glenn (formerly Cumulus Inc, North and Common) and rising-star Diana Desensi (Saint George, Daphne) to the kitchen helm. Together they are putting a modern twist on the Italian classics.
The dining room is alive and kicking, with a mess-hall chattiness and friendly and focussed service. You won’t have to wait long for food or a drink.
Speaking of, the cocktails are a mix of contemporary and classic, with wine from Australia and abroad the main focus. There are equally expensive and affordable pours, but the best value is by the glass. The Fighting Gully aglianico is my pick if you’re into reds, a splash of the house fiano (by Nagambie’s Tar and Roses) for white.
Bookend your eating experiences with sundaes- both sweet and savoury. At the top of the meal the pasta fritte, a riff on the gnocco fritto, sees fried pasta pieces with prosciutto, parmigiana cream, wrinkly green peppers and anchovies. It’s the ultimate drinking snack. To end, you may indulge in two glossy scoops of Pidapipo chocolate and fior di latte gelato, torched Italian meringue and what feels like half a jar of maraschino cherries juice and all. It’s indulgent, but straddles the sickly sweet line with confidence. Other notable snacks include the tuna n’duja, a fine dice of ruby red raw tuna tumbled in spicy spreadable salami. It would be much better served at room temperature with a little more salt, as would the vitello tonnato, but still gets points for creativity.
The calamarato is a celebration of the sea with thick hoops of pasta, prawns, calamari, octopus and clams; this visit is sweetened by the inclusion of strawberry clams from Eden.
The pork costoletta, an inverted parmigiana, sees a hefty bone-in pork cutlet stuffed with cheese and mortadella, breaded and pan fried in a sea of butter. It’s rich and a little dry at times, but worth sharing between a group.
Parts of my Delmonte experience made me feel like I was dining at an institution that had been around for years, others seemed like it was still finding its groove. Don’t let that stop you. Come summer, this place will be singing and I know where I’ll be popping in for a drink.
Images: Supplied