L'Artigiano Ivanhoe — Restaurant in Melbourne

My husband arranged a birthday dinner for me with 16 people here, we had a private room. We booked for 5.30 on a Saturday so well before any type of dinner ‘rush’. The assorted entrees were great, calamari fantastic. But that’s where the good stuff ends. I’m not a fussy eater by any means and I found the menu seriously lacking. I ended up choosing gnocchi in desperation as I couldn’t find any of my usual restaurant go to’s of a risotto or any type of chicken dish. Most limited main menu I’ve ever seen. I’ll say all the food was fresh and quality made, but my experience was marred by little annoyances. We were split over 2 tables and one table got all their food well before the other. Not ages, but long enough that the second table started looking and wondering where their food was. The 2 young waiters who brought the entrees who looked like teenagers got confused about what to put on each table, but it got sorted, and frankly they were the only 2 staff who cracked a smile the whole night. The main guy just gave me a vibe of being slightly annoyed the whole time. He came for mains orders twice with barely a few minutes in between and half of us were still saying hello to each other, I felt rushed. He was ‘professional’ but just seemed like he couldn’t wait for us to leave each time he came in the room. As the bday girl I was busy chatting all night yet I still noticed the attitude. Not one of them said happy birthday upon entry or exit. Which would have been a nice touch that cost them nothing. Even as we were leaving I smiled and said Thankyou to a lady wiping the bar (who did nothing, I was just being polite) and it looked as if smiling might be painful for her. Weird. My husband just dropped about a grand here and I’m thanking YOU!?! Ugh. I’m Italian and well aware that we’re not all super warm friendly ones, but a simple smile speaks a thousand words guys! If authentic Italian food floats your boat you’ll probably like this place, but growing up with that food it doesn’t impress me much. Whilst the food was quality, I’d never go back to a place that made me feel like...

Poor service and not great food. We booked a table for 12 for my daughter's 21st birthday. Bottom line - we had to ask for our food several times, eventually got served our main courses 2 hours after we arrived (we left about 15 minutes later) and the manager was belligerent and unhelpful throughout. I won't be going back. The story - we knew a couple of the party would be late so we placed our orders for the table about 15 minutes after we arrived and said that we would share entrees with them, but we didn't want to delay too long. For unknown reasons the manager waited a further 30 minutes (until all parties had arrived) to send the order to the kitchen, so the entrees showed up about 75 minutes after we had sat down. In the meantime I had to ask for bread as we were all hungry, but they had no hesitation coming repeatedly to ask for further drink orders. We sat over empty entree plates for 30 minutes, at which point I asked why we hadn't yet had the plates cleared and the main course served and the manager said that people were still eating (they were not). I followed up on the main course several times, finally offering to take my party away and feed them all pizza if the kitchen was having trouble - at which point the food finally showed up. I have had nice food there in the past, but this was not it. Despite waiting well over 2 hours for our main course, my eggplant was oily and undercooked and my daughter's funghi pizza was soggy and floury. The manager's excuse was that "he didn't know we were in a hurry". My daughter, on her special evening, was embarrassed that her friends had to wait 2 hours for their meal. I live a few minutes walk away, but won't...

It was a Wednesday so reasonably quite which we liked but that might not be what you are after. We did not take any photos. There were 3 of us celebrating a friend's birthday. Between us we had the Siciliani pizza starter with sweet caramelised onion, buffalo mozzarella, olives, basil and white anchovies which was heartily enjoyed. Always a pleasure to have white anchovies. We also had the beef carpaccio. The quality of the beef was excellent and melted in my mouth. The accompaniments were the usual Spanish onion, capers, shaved parmesan and the right touch of rich olive oil. Our mains were pan fried gnocchi with wonderfully creamy gorgonzola sauce with baby spinach and toasted pine nuts; grilled eggplant with tomato and fresh herbs, buffalo mozzarella and basil and linguine with prawns, scallops, vongole and mussels with herbs, chilli, garlic, white wine and olive oil. All three dishes were very good and the serving sizes were satisfying. The gnocchi was a very rich dish and the serving size was appropriately smaller than the linguine which was noticeabley bursting with fresh seafood. The size of the eggplant dish portion was between the other two dishes We were all very satisfied with our mains. We ordered one creme brulee between the 3 of us just for a light finish. It is around a standard half cup serving size which suited us well. Just a couple of teaspoons each was enough. The staff were attentive and just a look towards them was all that was required. We were light drinkers and just had a Chardonnay and a Limoncello Spritz. That's all that was needed. The delightfull meal for the 3 of us was $70 each which we agreed was very good value for the quality...