The former King & Godfree site is now home to a glam Italian wine-diner, with Karen Martini calling the culinary shots. Expect a menu of Italian crowd-pleasers with flavour “taken to the brink”.
It’s a momentous day for Carlton’s iconic King & Godfree building. The new jewel in the crown, Italian restaurant and wine room Delmonte, has arrived. On the corner of Lygon and Faraday streets, occupying the street-level space where the historic Italian deli and grocer stood for more than a century, a new era is in full swing.
The 160-seat Delmonte now anchors the dining and drinking precinct, which comprises new-ish pizzeria Garfield, rooftop bar Johnny’s Green Room and gelateria Pidapipo.
Behind the latest addition is Jamie Valmorbida, whose family bought King & Godfree in 1955. The deli was retained in the site’s previous iteration, which reopened with the addition of casual dining in 2018, but this most recent reroute leaves it in the rear-view.
“It was hard for the family to close the deli – that was a big decision,” says Valmorbida.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
As was figuring out its replacement: “[Reimagining] the corner was a challenge because it’s got so much history and it means so much to people. Everyone wants it to work. And that was also a big part of wanting to capture the history of the deli in this concept.”
There are nods to the deli in Delmonte’s design by Valmorbida collaborator Dion Hall (Garfield, Johnny’s, Supernormal). Slick terrazzo floors join overhead tube lighting and utilitarian tiling. Valmorbida is also in talks with council to install a King & Godfree plaque on the building’s exterior.
The deli days might be over, “but you can still get your mozzarella, your salumi – it’s just going to be on a plate”, says Karen Martini, the precinct’s culinary director (who also has the hatted Bar Carolina).
Her kitchen team at Delmonte includes executive chef Mark Glenn and head chef Diana Desensi, who Martini worked with at St Kilda’s Saint George. Their menu is intentionally familiar and all-encompassing, but it’s attention to detail that they hope will set it apart on a strip that’s flush with family-style Italian joints.
“We are doing a lot of dishes that have been served all the way up and down Lygon [Street] for years, but we’re doing them a bit differently,” says Martini. “Things are very honest, but the volume’s up … whatever the flavour is has been taken to the brink.”
Strong snacking awaits, from house-baked focaccia Genovese to house-made tuna ’nduja. Martini’s take on the trending charcuterie-loaded chips is crisp shards of gnocco fritto dough (the secret is chicken fat) draped with culatta and white anchovies. It’s what aperitivo-hour dreams are made of. Walk in, perch at the zinc bar, and order a quince-y house bellini or a chinotto spritz.
Or you can do what Martini likes to call “the full catastrophe”: a multi-course feast.
Valmorbida’s acquisition of legendary Carlton butcher Donati’s this year inspired the vitello tonnato. “[Founder] Leo Donati was known for his white veal,” says Desensi, who’s cooking it classically: gently poached, sliced thinly, layered with a tuna sauce.
“If I did it with foams, and bells and whistles, it wouldn’t be well received,” she says.
For Valmorbida, broad appeal is important. “We don’t want to be fancy or exclusive … just somewhere everyone feels comfortable.”
The name comes from a wine label that Valmorbida’s nonno Carlo launched in the ’60s, with the tagline “in ogni occasione”. The wine was “for all occasions”. So too is the restaurant.
Pizza reigns at Garfield and Johnny’s, leaving room for Delmonte to be the pasta paradise. The offering will grow, but initially it’s simple pleasures like tagliatelle bolognese, and calamarata (the calamari-ring-shaped pasta) with prawns, vongole and calamari in a yellow passata that’s bolstered by colatura, the aged Italian fish sauce made from anchovies.
Donati’s steaks come off a wood-fired grill, ranging from single-serve bavette and eye fillet to daily specials (first up: a 900-gram salt-crusted rib-eye that’s carved to share).
This is a restaurant built for conviviality. The lived-in warmth and mixed-and-matched chairs and tables have drawn comparisons with Martini’s legendary Melbourne Wine Room from the 1990s. There’s bar and banquette seating aplenty, and alfresco dining is set to take over Faraday Street. The kitchen plays a part, too.
“The whole idea was to drag the theatre – and energy – of the kitchen into the restaurant,” says Martini. Most snacks and sweets are plated in full view of diners. The dessert station is adorned with the day’s biscotti and torta (or pie, currently caramelised apple and custard); steel pozzetti are filled with Pidapipo gelato.
Much has been said about declining trade and foot traffic on Lygon Street, which has seen a shift towards fast-casual openings in recent years. But if anywhere has the potential to make dining out on the street truly great again, it’s Delmonte, and this precinct, with a subterranean, late-night cocktail and music bar still to come.
Delmonte opens today, Friday, July 31. It’s currently dinner-only six days a week, with Tuesday trade and weekend lunches to come.
Open dinner Wed-Mon
293 Lygon Street, Carlton, delmontewine.com
