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Fitzroy does Italian along Brunswick and Gertrude Streets, and this guide ranks the suburb's Italian rooms by their Curateria Score and what reviewers keep saying on their most recent visits, with chains and far suburbs left out. Wood-fired pizza and handmade pasta lead, and a couple of Italian bars earn their places on the food. These are the rooms Fitzroy diners actually name. Here is how they sit this month.
Top of the list is Red Sparrow Pizza - Vegan Restaurant, the vegan pizza room reviewers rate at the top of the suburb, the GOAT and cheeseburger pizzas and an nduja and hot honey pizza beside Not Wings vegan chicken wings and an almond praline dessert. Farro Pizzeria Fitzroy follows, the pizzeria reviewers come to for the pizza and the pasta, the Agnello lamb, Margherita and truffle mushroom pizzas beside a squid ink spaghetti gamberi, a lamb ragu tagliatelle and a tiramisu.
Ladro is the room reviewers rate for the 100-layer lasagne and the wood-fired pizza, the 100-layer lasagne and the Badabing, Diavolo and Capricciosa wood-fired pizzas beside a table-side tiramisu, arancini and polpette meatballs. Marios is the room reviewers come to for the carbonara and the gnocchi, the spaghetti carbonara and a pan-fried gnocchi beside mussels spaghetti, a tiramisu and French toast. Rocco's Bologna Discoteca is a bar reviewers rate for the meatball sub and a vodka rigatoni, the original meatball sub and a rigatoni al vodka beside a hot honey focaccia, a pork and fennel sausage casarecce and a cannoli soft serve, framed as the bar it is.
The Gertrude Hotel is a hotel reviewers come to for the hot honey pizza and a crab linguine, the stracciatella sopressa hot honey pizza and a crab linguine beside an eggplant parmigiana, a Monday steak with bottomless fries and calamari, named as the pub it is. Alimentari is the room reviewers rate for the wraps and the eggs, the meatball and chicken schnitzel wraps beside shakshuka eggs and salads. Bontempo is the room reviewers come to for the wood-fired pizza and the fresh pasta, the wood-fired pizza and fresh pasta beside a lasagne, a garlic focaccia, a pesto fettuccine and a linguine marinara.
The list closes across the suburb. Solo Pasta is the room reviewers rate for the long carbonara, the three-metre carbonara with spinach pasta and a bolognese beside a slow-cooked beef pappardelle, truffle mac and cheese bites and chorizo croquettes. Bar Rosella is the room reviewers come to for the Puglian plates, the spaghetti all'assassina and a ragu pappardelle beside bombette, a focaccia Barese, a vodka pasta, a whole barramundi and orecchiette Pugliesi. Freda's Bistro is the bistro reviewers rate for the beef tartare and the gnocchi, the beef tartare and steak frites beside a gnocchi with beef brisket ragu, king prawns, a tiramisu and a creme brulee. And Alta Trattoria rounds it out, the trattoria reviewers come to for the ravioli, the Ravioli del Plin and a lobster ravioli beside a vitello tonnato, a fettuccine truffle, a lamb neck and a gnocchi della Val Varaita.
If one thread here pulls you in, follow it across the city. There is a guide to the best Italian in Melbourne for the citywide picture, and a cross-cuisine tour of the best restaurants in Fitzroy for the rest of the suburb.
Every room here carries a Curateria Score built from its full review history, then weighted toward its most recent hundred reviews so the order reflects the room as it runs today, not as it ran two years ago. We hold the cohort to this one suburb and a tight inner-Melbourne radius, roughly 15km of the city, and we drop the multi-location chains and national franchises that trade on a logo more than a local following, so what is left reads as the genuine local order. Because a long-running room collects more reviews than a newcomer, we shrink the raw average toward the cohort mean for places with thin review counts, so a handful of glowing reviews cannot leapfrog a room a thousand diners have judged. Fitzroy's Italian cohort runs on pizza and pasta with a couple of Italian bars alongside, so the category gate keeps it to full-service Italian rooms and the bars that genuinely cook, each named for what it is. The corpus is Victorian and scored; no AI writer ever reads it. The ranking is arithmetic; the words are ours.
Explore more Italian in Fitzroy across Melbourne on Discover ->
Every venue here is ranked by its Curateria Score, a recent-review-weighted quality signal that leans on what diners are saying now, not years ago. Keep browsing Melbourne, sorted by Curateria Score, on Discover.
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