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Preston does Italian as a pizza-and-pasta belt, 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 fill the order, and these are the rooms Preston diners actually name. Here is how they sit this month.
Top of the list is Tonda Italian, the room reviewers rate for the stuffed gnocchi and the ragu, the stuffed gnocchi and a pappardelle lamb ragu beside a pappardelle carbonara, garlic focaccia and a tiramisu. Noi Pizzeria Preston follows, the pizzeria reviewers come to for the wood-fired range and a vodka rigatoni, the rigatoni alla vodka with burrata and the Noi, Mortadella, Gamberi and Napoli wood-fired pizzas beside a squid ink linguine, a linguine pescatora and a mushroom and truffle pappardelle.
Pausa Pranzo is the room reviewers rate for the cacio e pepe and a panini, the cacio e pepe and panini beside fresh pastries, espresso and Italian pasta. Takeaway Pizza is the room reviewers come to for the loaded pizza, the bone marrow and pastrami pizza and a mortadella and honey pizza beside a meatball pizza, a salami and honey pizza and a capricciosa. TAVOLATA is the room reviewers rate for the truffle pizza and a pasta, the truffle pizza and a gnocchi ragu beside a pork sausage carbonara, a mushroom ravioli and a pistachio tartufo.
Gipi's Pizza House is the pizza house reviewers come to for the peri peri chicken pizza, the Peri Peri chicken and The Lot pizzas beside arancini, a carbonara, a chicken and mushroom risotto and a sticky date pudding. AriPizza e Pinsa is the room reviewers rate for the pinsa and the Neapolitan, the Pinsa Romana especially the porchetta and a traditional Neapolitan pizza beside Wednesday arrosticini lamb skewers, calamari and an antipasto. The Warehouse Pizzeria is the pizzeria reviewers come to for the wood-fired range and a pasta, the Tropicana, San Daniele and Funghi pizzas beside a lasagne, a pasta marinara, gnocchi and Nutella pizza donuts.
The list closes across the suburb. Nord Bar & Restaurant is the bar and restaurant reviewers rate for the wood-fired pizza and a parma, the wood-fired pizza and a chicken parma beside calamari, pasta dishes and a tiramisu. Gordys Place is the room reviewers come to for the wood-fired pizza and a Macedonian pastry, the pizza whole or by the slice beside a Macedonian-style burek, maznik, kifli and apple pita. Lievito Madre Pizzeria is the pizzeria reviewers rate for the Patatino and a gnocchi, the Patatino pizza and a Margherita beside a capriciosa, a homemade gnocchi, a tiramisu and a Nutella bombolone. And Enzo’s Pizzeria rounds it out, the room reviewers come to for the thin-crust pizza and a gnocchi, the thin crispy-based pizza and a burnt butter gnocchi beside a chicken fettuccine avocado, a tiramisu and an Italian doughnut dessert.
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, the best pizza in Melbourne for the pizza side of Preston, and a cross-cuisine tour of the best restaurants in Preston 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. Preston's Italian cohort runs on pizza and pasta, so the category gate keeps it to full-service Italian rooms, while a venue with no real food evidence is filtered out. The corpus is Victorian and scored; no AI writer ever reads it. The ranking is arithmetic; the words are ours.
Explore more Italian in Preston 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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