Review Di Stasio Citta - Melbourne

What a delightful experience! We felt like royalty with so many friendly knowledgeable staff looking after us. Delicious cocktails, both traditional and modern and a stunning menu showcasing modern versions of Italian classics. Definitely coming back.

Went for our 9 year wedding anniversary and whilst the food was delicious the value for money and service didn't live up to the expectation. Being asked multiple times if we wanted a wine and later a coffee and then no farewell or being shown the door wasn't great. Had the $95pp set menu and chose the ricotta dumplings and crumbed scallops followed by the veal parma and tagliatelle. Dessert was a strawberry pavlova and tirimasu which were both specials on the night

Every bite was melt-in-the mouth gourmet. The service is second to none and the food so fresh, you feel the streets of Italy as you dine. Well worth the fine dining price tag. Highly recommended.

🐚 Scallops 🍃 Ricotta Gnudi 🥟 Alfredo Tortellini 🍚 Saffron Risotto 🍰 White Chocolate Tart 🍫 Chocolate Mousse Di Stasio Citta is literally a work of art. A traditional yet industrial-chic Italian restaurant where clips from Australian Artists are projected onto the walls and dine on tables with white tablecloths. I almost felt like I was not fancy enough to be there until I was greeted by their lovely wait staff. We carefully selected our dishes from their 3 course $95 set menu, each selecting something different so we could taste as much as possible. There absolutely was not a foot wrong here, every course was simple yet cooked and seasoned to perfection. I was especially impressed with the creamy Alfredo Tortellini (special), the Saffron Risotto and the stunning White Chocolate Tart. Initially concerned, we actually left quite full. Highly recommend Di Stasio Citta for a special occasion dining experience, I can’t imagine anyone leaving disappointed. ⭐️5/5

Great place to dine. Excellent service, great attention from the waiters, food was delicious. A comprehensive wine list. A memorable experience

Shared a wonderful meal with our daughter. Would prefer not to have a set menu but at least the meals were substantial.

Super bad food. Every dish is salty salty super salty. The bread is cold and hard to chew, expresso martini was sour, seriously??? Won’t come again. But the environment and the service is ok not too bad but I promise it doesn’t worth $155 pp for sure. Please never come

This is the most amazing restaurant I've ever experienced! From the quick, personal, & friendly service where the staff went above and beyond to accommodate to us, answering all of our questions with a smile, to absolutely incredible food that my friends and I haven't stopped talking about! The interior and lighting was so beautiful and unique, and the owner was so lovely, taking the time to speak to our table, and even gave me a bottle of chardonnay on the house for my birthday. Everything was perfection, I can't recommend this establishment enough. Keep up the exceptional work!

I don’t even need to write a review. Just see picture... this was served by a high end restaurant charging high end prices.. still in shock. Disgraceful or lazy take your pick. Also they forgot to bring the sides but compensated with a free bottle of wine I’ll give them that.

The most Rude and Disgusting treatment of people that our friends and family have ever experienced. We witnessed racism, prejudice and homophobic behaviour towards 2 male guests and this poor ill experience made us all sick to our core. We noticed managements lack of involvement after being made aware of this and absolutely no acknowledgement or apology from any of the offending staff. We will NEVER return. We have never experienced HATE and HURT at this level before. To the 2 men who were victims of this, our thoughts are with you.

Good location but still POOR RATE for a reason!<br/>We booked this restaurant 2 months ago. Before we came, we decided to Read some of the reviews. And the some reviews really put us off. I was telling my husband to give it a go. Maybe it’s not that bad. We spend $200 and had the WORST and RUDES dining experience. One particular staff’s rudeness was something we’ve never experienced from anywhere else. We talked about it with the Manager after we paid the bill. And the manager turned out not to be any better. He said the staff wasn’t rude just towards us, he is being rude all the time to everyone. So it’s not personal!!!! OMG! Is this can be a reason that we are treated so badly? Since this is the company culture, we will not come back again and we will want to think twice before booking this restaurant. If you want to ruin your date, this is the place to go!!!!!!

We had a pleasant time here with some friends. They have a good wine selection - mainly Italian wines. The food was good and the desserts nice. This was a solid eating experience but not an exceptional one which is why we have rated this as a 3.

Appetisers were quite nice but the pastas was really really salty. There were a lot of staff meandering around but it takes a few goes before they remember to bring your order around. Quite disappointing.

Reached out to Di Stasio direct but did not get a response. <br/>A group of 8 of us dined at Citta. Whilst we enjoyed the setting and the warm welcome, we have a couple of complaints which made for a disappointing experience. <br/>We ordered some starters and entrees to share and these were all fantastic. For main, 5 of us ordered the crab pasta. This however was almost to the point of inedible, overbearing with far too much salt. This was the consensus around our table. It seems the chef had been heavy handed with salt in this dish and did not taste what they were preparing. For an establishment like Di Stasio Citta this is unacceptable. As we were pressed for time we decided to persevere as we would have missed our next engagement if we re-ordered. <br/>The second problem lies with the style of wine pouring by some of their staff. I get the bravado of vigorously pouring water and wine however a couple of staff pouring wine at our table were so vigorous that a lot of our wine ended up on the tablecloth and not in our glass. This was to the point where we had to stop the waiter and pour our own wine. <br/>Disappointing experience.

A lovely evening with friends & friendly waiters. But food below par. Vitello tonnato<br/>a real disappointment. Cold gluey sauce over cold veal pieces. A far cry from many including Donnini's interpretation of this dish. Spaghetti with crab lovely flavour & with little crab but OK nevertheless. I wasn't paying for this  dinner so can't comment on value for money.

Once you have located the restaurant with no signage and then the magic button to open the entrance door, you enter a vast space, predominately polished concrete, large pillars, red chairs, white tablecloths and moving pictures projected onto many of the walls. It’s modern, smart, fine dining and with the associated price tag. Friendly staff and service on point and the food is impressive.

One of my top list for Italian restaurants in Melbourne. It was a great experience. The place many different vibes. Artistic, modern, stylist and an old school at the same time. Service was amazing. Food ... totally blew my mind. Can’t wait to come back to try some more

Booked at 8:30pm, restaurant was packed table wasn’t ready until 8:45pm. Decor is nice inc toilet , but tables very squashed and tight. Staff mostly Italian made it quite Italiano. <br/>Unfortunately, the food was below par for a Melbourne restaurant. Entrees we had soft shell crab ( which was overly salty and oily), egg plant chips which were alright. For mains We had the prawn linguine (which was plain, not enough ingredients and sauce ), the veal Milanese was soggy soaked with oil and very average, lemon lime bitters for $7.50 probably most expensive in town. That drink came half way through our meal. It is over priced and there are much better places like tipo 00 people should try. We didn’t bother with desserts. <br/>Unfortunately it wasn’t the experience we were looking for

Big Disappointment. Best thing on the menu is the wine. Cotoletta Alla Milanese version certainly very thin dry and too crispy. Taglillini al funghi were akin to an Asian stir fry. Shame shame shame. Please Mr Di Stassio keep your dog at home, No excuse for you to be there at the bar with your dog on the chair. Please don’t insult Melbourne with this pretentious take on Italian food. Might be time to retire.

Really had high hopes. Decor great and loved the projected art/ video, but the food was a massive let down. So salty and no finesse. What a shame - seriously not worth it.

Fail - shoestring pasta. I am happy to accept all sorts of reasons for poor food, but really tough pasta with salty mushroom soup dressing does not pasta con fungi make. How disappointing...

Incredibly overpriced for what you received. Very pretentious. However the atmosphere was excellent and service impeccable. Deserts were amazing.<br/><br/>For starters, we had two dishes. The raw vegetables and morsels of the sea. The vegetables were bland but fresh. The dip was delicious though. Morsels of the sea consisted of one prawn, on mini piece of fish and what looked like microscopic onion rings. <br/><br/>Main, we had two pasta dishes. The mushroom linguini and the pork and beef linguini. Absolutely delicious but portion sizes were more entree size. Incredibly expensive. <br/><br/>Value for money is not a word I’d use and the wine was manifestly overpriced. $90 for a Riesling from Tassie - seriously??? Same one you would have picked up for $20 from the local bottle shop.<br/><br/>If you have money to throw away, go here for sure, be seen and you’ll have your ego serviced. Otherwise, head to Lygon St if you want good traditional Italian at a good price. <br/>

Had a great meal on a Saturday night at the name that is still iconic in Melbourne. The food was all well presented and tasted beautiful. The service was a little slow but when the food and the fit out is that good you can make do. Can’t wait to go back.

Worst restaurant experience. I can’t comment on the food as the staff were so rude, we decided to take our business elsewhere. Not only was our table not ready at our booking time, but there was no where for us to stand except for in the awkward doorway. Not one staff member apologised, but instead were incredibly hostile towards our party. Melbourne’s CBD is full of much nicer, less pretentious restaurants that actually care about customer service. Alternatively, there is a McDonald’s just around the corner.

I know it is being referred to as the Milan end of Spring Street, but the expensive fit out at Citta with its visual projections reminds me more of stepping into a Pavillion at the Venice Biennale. The red leather seats are reminiscent of George and Amal’s favourite, Dal Bolognese so it has a touch of Rome about it too. Terrazzo, concrete, and marble are all there, so from that perspective Citta is a welcome and stylish addition to Melbourne’s crowded Italian dining scene.<br/><br/>Now the food. If only it was good as the fitout. The menu is extensive, but with Cipriani or Gritti style prices ( expensive) it is not for everyone especially when there is no carbonara, no cacio e pepe, no carciofo. no vongole and for Coeliacs no GF bread (allergies were discussed at booking) But the unforgivable omission is tirimisu . No tirimisu in an Italian restaurant , well that’s a first for us.<br/><br/>So what to choose . Well the red wine sauce on the Octopus really was delicious even if the portion was tiny. The pretentiously named Capri linguini was ordinary with the bland tiny bits of prawn adding no flavour and although it was ordered as a main the portion was only entree size. My wife’s baked rockling with potatoes was just awful on the verge of inedible. Unfortunately no tirimisu so there was no dolce for us. The wine list is extensive with Australian, Italian etc. all seemingly overpriced.<br/><br/>The smartly attired waitresses were friendly and faultless.<br/><br/>In a city groaning with Italian restaurants we were very much looking forward to Citta. Although the place looks amazing the food certainly did not meet our expectations. Citta represents poor value for money and has the feel that Ronnie is trying to recoup the expense of the fit out in a very short space of time.

We were very excited to try Di Stasio Città and given Di Stasio's cult-like status in St Kilda and the exorbitant prices, we expected great things from the new CBD restaurant. What a colossal disappointment.<br/><br/>Setting aside the fact that every dish is hideously overpriced, ( $30+ for a handful of rubbery "fried seafood", the majority of which was whitebait and potato straws) most of our dishes were mediocre at best. The slow baked fish was delicious but for $45 it was underwhelming and very basic. The wet roasted pork arrived as an unappetising pile of overcooked, heavily salted slop - far from the generous chunks coated in a luscious sugo we had envisioned. They took the dish off the bill when told it was inedible; however, for a restaurant with their reputation you'd expect an offer to make something else.<br/><br/>The final blow came with dessert in the form of their signature 'Zeppole di San Guiseppe'. Now, I make profiteroles with crème pâtissière all the time as they are one of life's greatest pleasures and I'm sorry to say but Città's tough, dry puffs filled with tasteless glue make the profiteroles from Safeway look gourmet. I can only assume that their 'custard' was made with nothing more than hot water and custard powder. The best part about them was the cherry on top.<br/><br/>Given the prices, this was perhaps one of the worst meals we've had and we're struggling to see why this restaurant is held in such high esteem. Perhaps the standard at the St Kilda establishment is completely different, but in any case, it's not good enough.

DO: Any of the pastas - my fav was the crab hands down. <br/><br/>DON'T: You dare leave without having the magnificent desserts and exceptional wine list. <br/><br/>TIP: Must book and make sure you have a couple of hours free ... The space is so beautiful that you can sit, escape, eat and drink until your credit card maxes out.

So excited to have a CBD sister to my beloved Cafe/Bar Di Stasio ! The wait was worth it - stunning design and as you would expect food and service under the legendary Chris Young both exceptional!