Cucinetta Melb South Yarra - Italian Restaurant Est. 2013 — Restaurant in Melbourne

ORDERED: 🍅 Caprese (v): Buffalo mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil pesto ($19.90) 🍝 Fettuccine Cacio e Pepe (v): Fresh fettuccine pasta with butter, black pepper, and parmesan cheese ($32.90) 🍝 Tagliatelle al Ragu dello Chef: Fresh tagliatelle pasta with special ragu (ours was duck) ($34.90) 🥦 Broccolini: Sauteed with garlic and chilli ($14.90) 🍰  Cucinetta Tiramisu: Traditional homemade tiramisu ($17.90)

Spent ~$62pp for two people.

REVIEW: Let's start with the food: ✔️ The entree olive bread was delicious!! Especially served with balsamic and olive oil. ✔️ The fresh pasta we had for Cacio e Pepe and the Ragu dello Chef (duck) was delicious. It is one of the BEST pasta we've ever had.Great texture and really good flavour that helps bring out the sauce. Literally 5/5 worthy. ✔️ Particularly loved how the pepper and the cheese in the cacio e pepe came through really well. Great smoothness and flavoursome, and each bite was cut through with a perfect amount of sharp pepper. 🧀 ✖️ Unfortunately, the broccolini was not it. For $14.90 and being served 5 pieces of broccolini... it doesn't look good with 5 thin stalks for ~$3 each. When it says it's sauteed with garlic and chilli, I was expecting more chilli flakes/ spicy taste. I could taste that it was steamed and lightly fried, and it had a garlic aromatic, but there was an opportunity to add more chilli and broccolini! ✔️ I liked the Caprese. Especially the delicious creamy and slightly sweet buffalo mozzarella. The alternating soft (red) and hard (green) tomatoes added some cool texture and kept the experience really exciting. ☺️ ➖ Tiramisu was a decent way to finish. There was too much cream for me around the edges, until you made your way to the middle of cup where there was a good balance of lady fingers.

Service was so speedy. ✔️ We got seated ASAP with a booking. Would highly recommend a booking, because we saw diners being turned away/referred to their sister restaurant. ✔️ The food came out so fast too! Especially from what looks like a small kitchen. Very impressed. We were in and out within 1 hour. 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️

✖️ Dislike how small the space was. My knee was touching my friend's leg all night 😂. A little bit awkward. Also, it was very easy to overhear the personal conversation of the...

Let me start by saying that the food here is incredible. You just cant beat that. And that's probably the reason for all the good reviews. I am very impressed with the food. We ordered the Arancini which was so good. Crispy on the outside and soft creamy on the inside. The cacio e pepe was so flavorsome but still not too creamy and heavy. A few not so good points. I do understand that the restaurant itself is very small but I feel the way they have set up the table can be improved to accommodate people better. My husband was struggling to put his feet inside the table and he is not even that tall. A tall person would have surely struggled. The second and the most important point was the service can be much much better. They did not note our order down. Which means 1 they made mistakes in the order and 2 they forgot about our order. For such a tiny restaurant and there were only like about 10 people inside the service could be far better. First my wine order was not taken properly and was almost served the wrong wine. Even though I showed on the menu which wine I wanted. Then they forgot our mains and got us the desert menu. I was so confused and asked for our mains. I assume that is when they realized they forgot our order. They made it quickly after that which was a blessing because we were so hungry. But I could see everyone else getting their mains even though we arrived first and hand a booking. Two people were there taking orders and serving. With only 8 or so tables and the restaurant only able to accommodate such a tiny crowd along with the staff in the restaurant it should have been a breeze to handle the orders. But that still got stuffed up. Which is quite sad. Specially if you have been in the restaurant business for a while.

Will still go back though hopefully find some improved service. But a very cute place for a date night. And the wine...

This place is sadly not what it used to be... Why do they take a bookings for dinner at 8:30pm on a Friday night (20th July) to be rushed into finish at 10pm is beyond me... the two Italian waitresses certainly couldn't care about the experience and service that they were offering, and it was obvious that they had better things to do that offer a good service.

After ordering cocktails, we were rushed to order as the kitchen was about to close, ok thats understandable...to apoint. The entrees arrived and they were ok. At not time we were offered more drinks or wine, so when the mains arrived to the table, we decided to order a bottle of wine... I wish they were just honest enough to say that we wouldn't have enough time to consume a whole bottle, but instead, every two sips of wine we had, was instantly replenish by one of the waitress.

We were made gulped down the lovely wine indirectly by both of the waitress behaviours. We decided not to have dessert, as we were already feeling the pressure and rush, but asked for coffee instead. COnveniently, the coffee machine wasn't working (I gave it the benefit of the doibt).

What made it even worse is the way one of the waitress was complaining to the other about how much longer we were planing to stay to drink our bottle of wine... and then she had the brilliant idea to play the song "closing time" and turn the volume so loud that we could barely hear eachother...

The place is not the cheapest, the food is just ok, but the overall experience that these two italian ladies have offered has brought me here as I am sick to be putting up with bad service, that somehow, make the restaurant feel kind of overpriced with seevice like this.

What happened to Cucinetta??!! I'm so...