Il Caminetto — Restaurant in Melbourne

🦑 Spaghetti Neri Alla Pescatore 🎃 Pumpkin Asparagus Risotto 🍕 Saporita Pizza 🍃 Lasagna Il Caminetto (translating to ‘The Fireplace’) is a newly renovated Italian pasta and pizza bar inspired by the beautiful, rocky city of Matera. They pride themselves on their traditional homemade fare and cater to everyone, impressively offering gluten-free and vegan/vegetarian options for almost every dish on the menu. We visited this year for Mother’s Day and the venue was packed and buzzing. You can really tell how authentic they are and how much they love what they do. I couldn’t go past the lasagna, one of my favourite italian dishes of all time. It was great, lots of layers and plenty of flavour, although it had the strange addition of what tasted like rosemary which I didn’t love. The pizza had a perfect base but the cheese used was incredibly pungent and hard to ignore. My mother thoroughly enjoyed the seafood pasta, and as I looked around the room she wasn’t the only one who did. Dish of the night was definitely the pumpkin and asparagus risotto, it was absolute perfection and exactly what a risotto should be. Since dining the seasonal menu has slightly changed and some dishes may now be...

So many vegan options!! Absolutely delicious food! There were four of us, and the arancini is a serve of three - they managed to do a regular serve of arancini with one vegan one extra on the side for me - very pleased with this. The vegan blogonese gnocchi was to die for! And receiving vegan parmesan cheese with it was such a treat! Having a dessert pizza to finish was yum too!

A bit of a weird situation with our booking though. We booked for 6.30pm on a Friday night, and when we arrived, another group turned up without a booking, but obviously were regulars, so the serving staff quickly scrambled to get them first in their preferred seat, and we got bumped from our table inside they had just tried to seat us at, to outside. First in a very dark, cold corner, and then after asked to move, directly under a heater so hot my scalp burned. A bit of an odd situation but was just very awkward and a bit unprofessional.

The service was fairly slow, but the serving staff were always polite. Grateful to be able to split the bill evenly between us!

Despite the odd booking situation, will be back! Still dreaming about...

Il Caminetto in Moonee Ponds is a gem. It's conveniently located along Pascoe Vale Road, and we found plenty of street parking on Bent Street (we went on a Sunday night).

We didn’t have a booking, but we were lucky enough to be seated straight away. The place was quite busy, which speaks to its popularity.

Service was fantastic: fast, efficient, and friendly.

We started with drinks: an Aperol Spritz and their weekly special cocktail, the Gin Garden. Both were excellent and set the tone for the evening.

For food, we shared the arancini and warm burrata to start (the burrata was especially memorable, just melting in your mouth). For mains, we had the wood-fired Umbra pizza, which had a beautifully fluffy dough and a well-balanced truffle flavour, and the tagliatelle alla boscaiola, which was easily one of the best textured homemade pastas we’ve tried. We finished off with their tiramisu, which was perfectly creamy with a great balance of flavours.

Every dish was a standout. If you're after a delicious and authentic Italian dining experience in the area, Il Caminetto is...