8 Best Restaurants in Melbourne, Victoria

This upscale bistro treads a very fine line between mannered elegance and decadence. A sleek marble bar and modishly ravaged walls contribute to the sense that you've stepped into a scene from La Dolce Vita. Happily, the restaurant is as serious about its food as its sense of style. Crisply roasted duck is now a local legend, and the pasta is always al dente. A seasonal lunch special (pasta with wine and coffee) for A$40 is a great value if you're nearby. For an informal drink before your meal, an adjoining bar has local wines and a light menu of the same high standards for those who failed to get a booking.

Since 1928, dining at Florentino has meant experiencing the pinnacle of Melbourne hospitality. After taking a seat in the famous mural room, with its huge chandeliers, wooden panels, and Florentine murals, you can sample dishes like suckling pig, and spanner crab risotto. The three-course menu is A$150 while the five-course Gran Tour menu costs A$180. Downstairs, the Grill focuses on wood-fired dishes including pici (pasta) with wild boar ragu or grass-fed steaks, while in the Cellar Bar, you can start your day with Italian pastries and espresso on the outside tables from 8 am, or finish the night with a glass of wine and pasta of the day.

This is the place for authentic Italian pizza: chef Johnny Di Francesco trained in Naples to make pizza to the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana rules, and has consistently won titles of world's best margherita, and also best pizzeria in Oceania. Besides pizza, the restaurant serves excellent pasta and other Italian dishes in a buzzing section of Lygon Street. There are also iterations in Essendon, Southbank, Mornington and the Yarra Valley and an aptly titled gelato spinoff, Zero Gradi, in Brunswick. 

Every city center needs a place like this, with a drop-in bar and lively dining room. At lunchtime no-time-to-dawdle business types tuck into Italian classics, while those with a sweet tooth will go weak at the knees over a decadent tiramisu. Things get a little moodier at night, when a Campari and soda at the bar is an almost compulsory precursor to dinner. Self-caterers should peruse its beautiful little produce store, next door.

If you're looking for a quintessential Italian dining experience in a place where it's easy to imagine yourself back in the old country, this is it. Fashionable, look-at-me types flock here for coffee and pastries downstairs, or more-leisurely meals upstairs in the warm, woody dining room. Try the melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi, or calamari Sant' Andrea (lightly floured and shallow fried).

A major player in Melbourne's pizza wars, D.O.C. has perfected the art of using fresh, simple ingredients to create something special. The real treat lies in the pizza of the day. One with Ubriaco Amarone cheese, Romana artichokes, smoked toasted almonds, radicchio, and shaved Parmesan might be on offer, or perhaps another with Petrilli passata, garlic, artisan stracciatella, Cantabrico anchovies, and basil (around A$25). Whatever is in season or comes in, they will use. A chocolate pizza is at the ready for those with a sweet tooth. They also have a delicatessen around the corner (330 Lygon Street), which could be a good option for a packed lunch, and there's other locations in Southbank and the picturesque seaside town of Mornington.

A local favorite, this stellar Italian bistro emphasizes flavor over starchy linen and stuffy attitude. Delicious wood-fired pizzas, that some insist are the best in the city, put this suburban gem on the map (thankfully, it's only a short walk from the city). On the specials board, lamb rump is scented with garlic and parsley and slow-roasted to impossible tenderness, and the service is as upbeat as the wine list.The Ladro family also includes Ladro TAP, an environmentally sustainable Italian eatery in Greville Street, Prahran. Vegan and gluten-free options are available.

With one of Melbourne's first espresso machines installed here in 1954, it was the beginning the city's love affair with both Italian coffee and Pellegrini's. Take a stool at the bar or the table in the kitchen and choose from such classics as lasagna or cannelloni—servings are fast and vast—then let the staff talk you into a slab of strudel to finish.