TAVOLATA — Restaurant in Melbourne

4.5/5

Their menu has a strong focus on pizza and pasta, with a selection of smaller dishes and desserts to finish off the night. Despite being a busy night, their service was friendly and super quick to action any last minute orders for us.

The highlights were the pizzas – the bread was so fluffy, thin and you could taste the char from the wood-fired oven. The toppings were plentiful and so flavourful. The middle was soggy, causing some of our toppings to fall off mid-bite. I know this is a pet peeve for some, but it didn’t bother us. Nothing a fold can’t fix. Both pizzas are worthy of a re-order. The Bing was (not too) spicy, the sauce was rich and the portion itself was excellent. The Tartufo had the beautiful umami of truffle but it did not overpower at all, the prosciutto was nice and thin – again, a really tasty pizza and I’d reorder. My sister had a GF pizza and she said it was one of the best GF pizzas she’s tried so far as the bread didn’t taste like cardboard lol. The Gnocchi was the better pasta out of the 2 – soft, fluffy pillows of potato in a rich ragu. It didn’t blow us away flavour-wise but it ticked all the boxes and I’d reorder it. The carbonara, on the other hand, fell flat – it was bland, and generally taste-less. The pasta was also a little too al dente for my liking but had the sauce been better, I would’ve overlooked this. The salad was also good, slightly expensive for the size but mum enjoyed it and said it was fresh. More salad/fresh options on the menu would be nice to see.

Overall, we were very pleased with our experience here! I can definitely see myself returning for those pizzas, they are some of the best I’ve had and I hope they draw in bigger crowds because they deserve it with the quality of food they are producing. It’s always so nice to see places like this open up...

my girlfriend and i went here a couple months ago and we had such an awful experience that her dad ended up writing a review because of how upset we were but it seems like tavolata is deleting negative reviews because it’s nowhere to be found now so i’ll retell the experience and see if this gets deleted too. when we get there, there’s only one table inside available and it’s shoved right up against another table and we knew we would feel cramped. i should also mention that the inside of the place is super hot (granted the pizza oven is like 5 metres away) so we asked if there were any tables available as to not feel hot and cramped. thankfully there was one table outside so we were relieved, until we find the there’s a fire heater literally next to my seat burning my shoulder, and a rubbish bin directly behind my girlfriends seat. her seat was also at the top of the ramp so if she moved back even a centimetre she probably would’ve tumbled down the ramp. anyways, once we sit down the waitress asks us if we would like some water and we said yes. 15 minutes later and still no water and only now has someone else asked us for our order. we mention to this guy (who i think is one of the managers not too sure) that we still haven’t gotten our water and his response was to confront the waitress infront of us and then get our water. the rest of the night that same waitress kept giving us these death stares and grumpy looks. look, i understand you probably don’t like your job (i would too if i were working there) but don’t take it out on us. the food was fine but after 2 drinks and 2 pizzas altogether, $97 dollars nowhere nearly justifies the quality of food or the experience.

i really hope they don’t delete this review but i...

Ok, from my previous reviews on wood fire oven style pizzas (although at Travolta I’m not sure it’s a wood fire oven) I’ve had owners respond with “we only use the very best of ingredients….etc, etc” to justify pricing. I’ll come back to that. When I entered the restaurant, service was generally friendly where I was greeted by a young smiling lady and the pizza chef even said hello. So far, so good. I ordered a prawn pizza, with hot salami, cherry tomatoes with extra chilli and mozzarella. The pizza toppings had 1 to 1.5 good sized prawn per slice (6-8 slices) there was about 12 slices of salami and the tomato sauce on the base was fresh. The base was crispy and the crust was nice and chewy. All in all, not a bad pizza, not mind blowing, but respectable. However, the sticking point was that the pizza cost $32! Now I understand completely that a business has to make money, but imagine you take a family of four in and order four pizzas costing an average price of $30 a pizza from this place. That’s $120 for just four pizzas! Really?! That doesn’t include drinks, coffee, or dessert. You aren’t near a river, a beach or quality venue with a view to say location justifies the extra pricing. It’s a small suburban Italian restaurant between Reservoir and Preston on Plenty Road. Is the product so special to justify paying this much money? In a word, no. There needs to be a balance between quality of product, with consideration to location, atmosphere, and value for money, unfortunately the latter has fallen short. If you have the surplus funds, then Travolta is possibly your cup of tea. But realistically the place is too expensive...