It sounds ridiculous, but Melbourne’s most ubiquitous and loved cuisine is back in the spotlight. We have a theory about this: the food conversation has been getting more and more conceptual this past decade, sometimes to its detriment. Italian food is the reliable, familiar, uncomplicated cure we need. Still, the new wave of Italian restaurants is a bit different to what Melbourne’s seen before. Some take significant influence from America, one is vegan and perhaps most radically, many don’t have owners with Italian heritage.

South Melbourne’s Park Street Pasta and Wine has been open for 18 months now, but we’re not convinced the little osteria is getting the attention it deserves. The pasta here really is outstanding. The team rolls it every day using the best ingredients possible: Daylesford’s Honest Eggs Co and flour from Laucke Flour Mills in South Australia.

In Carlton, who saw Capitano coming? In August the crew at Fitzroy wine bar Bar Liberty pivoted sharply to open this Italian-American restaurant. In addition to benchmark NYC-style pizzas, American-born co-owner and chef Casey Wall is serving things Australians had previously only experienced in movies, such as pasta in vodka sauce.

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A few blocks away you’ll find a DJ booth, heavily tatted bartenders and a nostalgic ’70s-looking fit-out. You’re at Leonardo’s Pizza Palace the also-Italian-American spot from the team at Ramblr and Leonard’s House of Love. Dinners here are the most fun we’ve had in a while. Start with a few crostinis (we’re partial to the jalapeno and n’duja) then move onto the supersized pizzas, which come with ranch sauce for dipping crusts.

There’s also plenty of ink at Smith and Daughters, the vegan restaurant Mo Wyse and Shannon Martinez launched in 2014. Originally the Fitzroy eatery was about Central American food. Chef Martinez had a sudden change of heart last year while couch-bound, fighting off a hangover with a “massive” bowl of pasta. A vegan Italian restaurant was born.

And most notably of all, legendary restaurateur Rinaldo Di Stasio has just opened his first restaurant in 30 years. Di Stasio Citta is on Spring Street, opposite the Treasury Gardens. It’s the complete opposite of everything we mentioned above: grand, classic and full of artistry.

This story originally appeared in Melbourne Print Issue 25.