Four To Try: Pasta Menus at Dine Out

Dine Out, Broadsheet’s winter food festival, is back for its second year. In partnership with Mastercard and Doordash, we’re staging 50 new events across the city from Monday July 20 to Sunday July 26. This year’s line-up includes spotlights on the city’s Mexican and Italian food scenes.

A pizza party, with Footscray’s Good Pizza, Fitzroy’s Deep End Pizza, Thornbury’s Porco Ciccio and travelling pizzaiolo Salim Gafayri all baking pies in a food truck-style set-up, will take over Collingwood brewery Molly Rose. And here are four pasta specials to add to your festival hit list.

Spaghetti alla ruota, Stokehouse Pasta & Bar x Enoteca Boccaccio

Boccaccio Cellars has been servicing the good people of Balwyn East and surrounds with Italian wines and pantry staples since 1963. In 2023 the D’Anna family took the plunge and opened a full-blown restaurant, Enoteca Boccaccio, on the same site. Today the menu combines the best of Italian cuisine with selected touches from elsewhere, such as Spanish Espelette peppers and dashi-infused butter. The restaurant’s pasta complement is particularly strong, making it a fine fit for Stokehouse’s downstairs restaurant, Pasta & Bar.

The two pasta specialists are putting on a collaborative set menu for $145 per person, including an arrival drink, snacks and salumi to kick things off. The main event is spaghetti alla ruota (cheese-wheel pasta) served alongside Boccaccio’s sourdough focaccia and a bitter leaf winter salad with orange. To finish? Cannoli, of course. 6pm–10pm, July 23. Book here.

Tagliatelle al ragu, Rocco’s x Sebastian Pasinetti

It’s a Dine Out disco at Gertrude Street restaurant Rocco’s. For one night only, Broadsheet writer and proud cook Sebastian Pasinetti is drawing on his Calabrian heritage to serve a four-course set menu that’s punchy, playful and perfect for a party.

Expect plenty of Italian wine and cocktails poured generously all night, disco on the speakers and service that’s less of a sit-down dinner and more like a supper party. Dishes embrace bold, southern Italian flavours, balancing richness with a healthy dose of acidity. Pour a spritz and make some new friends. 7pm–10pm, July 26. Book here.

Truffle and Korean Black Garlic Spaghetti, Alt

For the past three years, Mino Han’s CBD pasta bar Alt has been turning out some of the most creative pastas in Melbourne.

For Dine Out festival, the former Culinary Class Wars contestant is sticking to the theme with a lunch and dinner special of spaghetti with black West Australian truffles and Korean black garlic. Midday–3pm & 5pm–9.30pm, July 21 to 26. Book here. Walk-ins welcome.

Carbonara, Figlia

For one day only, Brunswick East restaurant Figlia is hosting a long lunch celebrating dishes from Rome. And it’s bringing in two native Roman chefs to show us how it’s done. Lorenzo Princigalli (Osteria Illaria) and Mattia Fugaro (Retrobottega, Rome) are teaming up with Figlia executive chef Alberto Fava to cook classics from the Eternal City. On the four-course set menu, expect baccala fritto (fried salt cod), suppli (rice croquettes), carbonara with guanciale and no cream and, for dessert, maritozzi (cream buns). Drinks are charged on consumption. Midday–4pm, July 26. Book here.