Tutto Bene Woodfired Pizzeria & Wine Bar — Restaurant in Melbourne

Walked into this place last night and immediately felt like… no one knew what was going on. There was nobody to greet us at the door, just staff standing across the room staring. After a good few awkward seconds we went up to them ourselves and asked for a table, only to be told “just sit anywhere.” Okay, not a great start but fine.

We sat down, got menus… and then they disappeared. Twenty minutes went by. Literally nothing. Eventually we asked if we could order food, and the waitress just said she’d “ask the bartender” to take our order. Another ten minutes later, still nothing, so we actually walked over to the bar to try again. The bartender was busy making two cocktails, which somehow took fifteen minutes, before finally coming over. At that point we placed our order and specifically asked for all the food to arrive at the same time. We also asked for a glass of house wine.

The wine didn’t show up for fifteen minutes. The food, when it eventually came out, was brought at completely different times despite us asking otherwise. Keep in mind — the restaurant was empty. There were maybe three other people there, and even they looked just as confused. I overheard another couple complaining about not being able to place an order with the waitress, so it wasn’t just us.

Now, the food itself was… fine. The Neapolitan-style pizza was actually pretty solid, I’ll give them that — easily the best thing we had. But the meatballs fell apart the second you touched them and the sauce was way too salty. The gnocchi in pesto sauce also leaned heavily into salty territory. Edible, sure, but nothing close to “award-winning.” And weirdly, for an Italian restaurant, there was no salt, pepper, or olive oil on the tables.

The ambiance? Honestly, a joke. The music was a weird mix of hip-hop and random Italian disco, which clashed completely. There’s a big neon sign on the wall with some cheesy pizza slogan glowing blue — the whole vibe felt more like a basement pub than an Italian trattoria. To top it off, the waitress just left an hour into service, which kind of summed up the professionalism of the staff.

Overall, the staff seemed lost, the service was frustratingly bad, and the atmosphere was all over the place. The only saving grace was that the food wasn’t awful — the pizza especially was tasty — but everything else was a let-down. Not going back. Two stars, and only because the pizza was good enough to stop it being a...

We have been to Tutto Bene a few times and each time has been a really solid experience. Their pizza dough is really one of my favourites. It’s thin, slightly floppy but has a chew to it which is more of an authentic Napoli-style dough. Their Tropicana pizza has a good balance of ham and pineapples with just enough sugo that’s also well balanced between tart and sweet (from the tomato). Funghi tartufata is generous with the amount of mushrooms. I enjoy my funghi pizza with chilli oil and their chilli oil has good flavour and thus balances the earthiness of the mushrooms well. If you want you can order the $2 fresh chillis with olive oil to go with it and it’s awesome.

Gnocchi is well cooked and al dente, some places just have gnocchi with a slightly softer texture and I’m never a fan so it’s a breath of fresh air where the gnocchi is cooked properly and the alla sorrentina sauce is well balanced and the dish is placed in a pizza bowl. I would not recommend carbs on carbs in most cases but the chewiness of the pizza goes so well with the gnocchi.

Linguine frutti de mare had good seafood flavour, pasta cook al dente but imho nothing to shout home about.

Lasagne was good, their version is on the drier side. I fully respect restaurants that can cook lasagna sheets al dente and they did so prop goes out to them. However, I don’t know if they put Parmesan on the base of the lasagne to bake but the bottom had black burnt thin pieces (like a burnt cheese tuile). We took it out but it definitely had a burnt taste to it.

Lastly, pistachio tiramisu was alright. I am not a pistachio person so I felt I would have very much preferred a normal tiramisu but I will say that the sabayon was thick and luscious and there was a good amount of coffee flavour...

This is 11/10 easily the best pizza I’ve ever had in Australia.

The dough is fresh and hand rolled unlike most places, ingredients are top quality, it is authentic Italian cuisine with high standards, it is clear the chef is passionate and takes pride in what he does.

I do also recommend DoorDash, I would not be able to have this pizza often if it weren’t for DoorDash, due to being busy and having to look after kids so I appreciate they offer the service.

It’s never going to be as good as dine in, but that’s the compromise for convenience, if you’re on the fence and you are unable to dine in I think give Takeaway a try, as long as you have reasonable expectations the experience is really good and I appreciate they offer this service without overcharging.

Other places that offer this level of quality usually overcharge DoorDash customers $42 just for pasta sometimes, so I really appreciate they respect takeaway customers and do not take advantage of us and have fair pricing and portions.

Please keep up the great work and you have a loyal customer for many...