Melbourne has the oldest Italian pizza culture in Australia and no form of its own that this research could find. What it has instead is transmission: Tony Nicolini and his brother Remo run two of the records here, and Australia's first pizzeria opened on Lygon Street in 1961 and closed in 2020 - recorded in the research file, not as a record, because no source names its pizzaiolo. The most inventive thing found in the city is an import of a Tokyo technique. As with Sydney, this set is incomplete: it was built against the tight LGA rather than the Greater Melbourne boundary this record actually states, and both of Melbourne's world-ranked pizzerias sit outside the former.
This Carlton corner is the flagship of the DOC group (see the companion Surry Hills, Sydney record for the branch this spawned). Tony Nicolini opened Carlton Espresso in 2004, renamed it DOC Espresso in 2007 and opened DOC Pizza the same year; in his own words the dough celebrates 'contemporary pizza but using ancient and organic grains and respecting the fermentation of the dough'. The pizza is a hybrid of Neapolitan and Roman styles.
Verified 2026-09-18
+39 Pizzeria's owner is Remo Nicolini, brother of Tony Nicolini of DOC — the same family runs two of this report's six Melbourne records. The pizzeria's own site describes itself as 'an ode to the Pizzaiolo of Naples', founded by six friends with family ties to Italy.
Verified 2026-09-18
Capitano, from the Bar Liberty team, is inspired by co-owner Michael Bascetta's Sicilian heritage and the Italian-American food chef Casey Wall grew up eating. Co-owner Banjo Harris Plane has described a sourdough base fermented for 48 hours and cooked in an electric oven, producing a pizza 'slightly sturdier than a traditional Neapolitan pie'.
Verified 2026-09-18
Garfield, opened in early 2026 on Lygon Street, deliberately applies Japanese pizza-making technique to an Italian base: a dough of 100 per cent Italian Casillo wheat flour fermented for 72 hours and shaped with the Tokyo stretch method rather than the Neapolitan slap-and-toss, baked low and slow in a rotating Marana wood-fired oven. Owner Jamie Valmorbida and culinary director Karen Martini cite Japan's pizza scene, not Naples, as the direct influence.
Verified 2026-09-18
Dom's is a three-level pizzeria, pool room and rooftop bar in the CBD from Sam and Tom Peasnell and Adam Goldblatt, who also run Preston's Dexter and Takeaway Pizza (both outside the City of Melbourne boundary). The base is a sourdough fermented for 72 hours and dimpled like focaccia before it goes into the wood oven.
Verified 2026-09-18
Leonardo's Pizza Palace opened in December 2018 in a Carlton building that previously housed Da Salvatore Pizza by the Metre, a pizzeria dating to 1959. The kitchen turns out woodfired, charred pizzas including one topped with 'Chinese bolognese' taken from a sister venue's menu, which the review itself frames as more Italian-American/Italian-Australian than Neapolitan.
Verified 2026-09-18
Shop225 works a 72-hour proofed Neapolitan-style dough baked in a custom Melbourne-made Colosimo wood-fired oven. It is the first pizzeria in Australia accredited by Coeliac Australia.
Verified 2026-09-18
48h Pizza e Gnocchi Bar takes its name from the minimum 48-hour natural-yeast rise its owners give the dough. Co-owner Fabio Biscaldi and pizza chef Michele Circhirillo are named as D.O.C. alumni, linking the restaurant to the Nicolini family lineage recorded on this city's D.O.C. Pizza and Mozzarella Bar and +39 Pizzeria entries.
Verified 2026-09-18
Il Caminetto has run a long-leavened, wood-fired pizza programme in Moonee Ponds since 2018 under head pizzaiolo Antonino Gallà. The restaurant's own site calls it Melbourne's first wood-fired pizza oven, a claim recorded here as the business's own and not independently verified.
Verified 2026-09-18
400 Gradi's flagship on Lygon Street, Brunswick East is the house Johnny Di Francesco built his reputation from: named for the 400°C wood-fired bake, run to AVPN discipline by a pizzaiolo who trained in Naples and became the association's Australasian principal, sending his own chefs there for training in turn.
Verified 2026-09-18
