Carlton has Italian history embedded in every corner of its trattoria-lined streets. Also known as ‘Little Italy’, this cultural precinct of Melbourne came to life with the first wave of Italian immigration in the 1950s. These days it’s part nostalgia and part new world charm.
At the edge of the city, Russell St transitions into Lygon St, the central thoroughfare and heartbeat of Carlton. A stroll down this street, especially around meal times, will no doubt attract the calls of the restaurateurs spruiking their menus and gesturing at their alfresco seating. Love or hate it, it’s all part of the Lygon St experience, but a general rule of thumb is to avoid any place that resorts to pushy measures. These days the authenticity has been diluted, so if you pick at random, you’re not guaranteed a delicious pasta.
Even so, some of the true institutions of early Lygon St can still be found here. My father is a second generation Australian, born of Italian parents, and he recalls attending Melbourne University and the haunts he and his student friends used to frequent with fondness. Toto’s opened in 1961 and was the first pizza house founded in Australia. The founder, Salvatore Della Bruna, claims to have invented the ‘Aussie’ pizza with egg, bacon and pineapple. He says ’If my father woulda seen me making pizza with the pineapple, he woulda killed me’. Another haunt of his was Papa Gino’s, which is still owned by the Brosca family and has been around for over 40 years. Tiamo is also a classic where you can expect rustic home cooked food in an unpretentious environment (think black and white checked floors, poster tacked walls and atmospherically and wine in jugs).
King & Godfree has long supplied groceries and smallgoods, but the recent revamp by Carlo Valmorbida’s grandchildren expands on the grocery store concept to include an espresso bar and rooftop bar with views. Johnny’s Green Room is the perfect spot for a negroni and brings back a slice of the nightlife Carlton used to be known for in my parent’s days. Borsari’s Corner has long lit up the corner of Lygon and Grattan street with it’s neon bicycle. It was opened by Nino Borsari in 1941, who was an Olympic cyclist, unable to return home when WWII broke out whilst he was competing in Australia.
Piazza Italia in the Argyle Gardens sits as a focal point for community, the result of a joint development project with our sister city of Milan. As part of the arrangement, Italian stonemasons came to Australia to undertake the work alongside Australian stonemasons in 2006, and at another point, the artistic exchange was reversed. It’s the perfect spot to relax with a gelato and on Summer evenings, watch a free family movie in the open air.
Speaking of gelato, Casa del Gelato, is the one of the longest running gelaterias in Australia. Founded in 1980 by Ottorino Pace. It’s now run by his children, who continue to serve up to 62 flavours of homemade Italian gelato from their retro shopfront. Whilst there are now several ice cream offerings on Lygon St, you cannot go past the original. That being said, another more recent addition to the street and popular choice, is Pidapipo. Founder Lisa Valmorbida trained at the Carpigiani Gelato University in Bologna before opening her colourful gelateria in 2014. Whilst all the flavours are hidden in pozzetti cylinders, the warm Nutella tap adds enough drama. D.O.C. Pizzeria is another business that has reinvigorated Carlton, bringing a new wave of love for pizza to Melbourne. Score an alfresco seat and enjoy a plate of fior di latte mozzarella and San Daniele prosciutto with an Aperol spritz – it doesn’t get better!
Carlton is also where the infamous Melbourne coffee culture was born. It was here that Australia’s first espresso machine was installed by the University Cafe, but not before the Gaggia was held at customs for months, by suspicious staff who didn’t know quite what it was. Brunetti’s is no doubt an icon of Carlton, the kind of place where you can walk for an espresso at 9am or an aperol spritz at 9pm. The Roman-style pasticceria is a staggeringly large, covered in grandiose marble floors. The hustle and bustle of the dozens of uniformed staff serving panini and cannoli or working the four coffee machines put on centrestage, all add to a sense of drama.
On the opposite side of the drama spectrum, is Market Lane, a quaint cafe serving specialist coffee through a small street side window. Next door, Baker D. Chirico is unmissable for their artisan breads, sold to customers from a shop built to look like the inside of a bread basket. Designed by March Studio, the curvaceous timber shelves offer up sourdough baguettes, rustic loaves and sweet pastries that would tempt even without the beautiful display. The Queensberry Pour House is another cosy spot, with handmade ceramic cups and bringing home the concept of bottomless cups of filter coffee from the diners of America. The old world charm of this spot is also enhanced by the folky soundtrack of artists like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Dire Straits.
Seven Seeds is the modern coffee institution of Carlton. In contrast to their neighbours, they were amongst the first to define a new roasting style in Melbourne that differed from Italian traditions. Seven Seeds is named after the story of Baba Budan who smuggled seven raw seeds of coffee out of Yemen and into India during the 17th century, so that coffee could be grown outside the Middle East for the first time.
Seven Seeds is hard to miss with the crowds of students and hipsters waiting outside, but Vertue Coffee takes a coffee fiend on a mission to find it. Even for those in the know, you’ll certainly question whether you’re on the right path as you cross the petrol station car park and head down an alley lined with terraces and bins. Still then, you’ll only be able to sigh in relief as you round the final corner and spot a few al fresco tables scattered in the lane. The cafe featuring a sky high-atrium was originally a stable and displays a copy of the first known coffee advertisement from a 1652 London coffee house, expressing the ‘vertues’ of coffee’s medicinal properties.
Any lover of cheese will adore Milk The Cow. This licensed fromagerie is often open until 1am, ensuring you are never too late for a perfectly matched cheese and wine platter. Enjoy a pre-selected flight board of four cheeses and wines for $25 or progress to your own selection from the 180 local and imported cheeses on offer. Their cocktails also come garnished with a wedge of matched cheese – the Fig Shrub cocktail accompanied by a Gorgonzola Piccante is a delicious surprise.
If you feel like Mexican, Taquito is all about the tortilla. They make each one from scratch and the restaurant name means ‘little taco, but in an affectionate way’. They also have a strong line-up of tequila and mezcal offerings, with unique spins on the classic margarita like the ‘Dos’, which features snow pea, lime and jalapeno ash.
Food aside, Melbourne University is very much at the heart of what gives Carlton its sense of identity. Classes in arts, law, medicine and music first started in 1855 with only 16 students and 4 professors. As a progressive place, women were first admitted in 1881, some 27 years before they were awarded the right to vote in Australia. With it’s beautiful gothic revival architecture, the campus is also unofficially known as ‘Melbourne’s Hogwarts’, although more modernist style buildings were introduced in the 1950s as the student population expanded. It’s setting has attracted filmmakers and is known for its appearance in cult classic, Mad Max, and is so vast it even has its own postcode.
Education also gave rise to bohemia and the arts, enabling places like the Readings and La Mama’s Theatre to flourish. The Nova Cinemas are also beloved and reputed for showing independent, Australian, art-house and international films. In 2013, they even showed a film called ‘Si Parla Italiano’, a documentary covering the history of Lygon St and its place in building integration of Italian culture in Australia. You can hear some of the original faces of Carlton, back when it was a village, speak of what it was like in the early days. You’ll hear about how the first Lygon St Festa in 1978 was formed from the simple idea of having a street party to bring the Australians and Italians together with festivities like climbing to the top of a greasy pole to get the prosciutto. You’ll also hear them allude to the L’Alba cafe, famous for the high-stakes illegal card games it conducted upstairs which were frequented by Alphonse Gangitano. Gangitano was known as the ‘Black Prince of Lygon Street’ and his murder started a ‘tit for tat’ series of gangland killings later dramatisied in the ‘Underbelly’ series. It’s well worth a watch.
Venture East and you’ll soon hit the Carlton Gardens, a lush 26-hectare park homing the Royal Exhibition Building, IMAX and Melbourne Museum. The Melbourne Museum has interesting collections to share including ‘Melbourne’s Biggest Family Album’ (which collates almost 10,000 vintage photos from as early as the 1860s) and a series of taxidermied animals, bugs and dinosaur skeletons. The most famous exhibit by far though, is the taxidermy mount of Phar Lap, a champion racehorse who was mourned by a nation after he died of a suspected poisoning.
The Royal Exhibition Building is Australia’s only world heritage listed building, awarded for being one of the last remaining world exhibition buildings from the 19th century. Over the years it’s witnessed the opening of the first Parliament of Australia and the unveiling of the new Australian flag, several sports in the 1956 Olympics and even moonlighted as a hospital during the 1919 influenza pandemic. In more recent times, it has hosted the runways of the Melbourne Fashion Festival and the gathering of creativity that is the Finders Keepers market.
To leave you one last fun fact about Carlton, you might be surprised that the area was once known as ‘Little Jerusalem’. It was only post WWII that the Jewish community moved to suburbs like Caulfield and Balaclava, and Italians took over, building what we know and love today as ‘Little Italy’.
