Park Street Pasta & Wine

The concise menu here changes fortnightly. It's featured dishes such as charred octopus with romesco, and Jerusalem artichoke and sweet potato crisps. All the pasta is made in-house every day using Daylesford’s Real Eggs and flour from Laucke Flour Mills in South Australia. Pasta dishes have included veal and wild rabbit agnolotti with sage butter, and a ricciutelle with red-wine braised octopus and bone marrow.

It also serves fresh extruded pasta – made by forcing dough through a cutting device known as a “die” to get varieties such as macaroni and penne – including a casarecce with Wagyu beef-cheek ragu. (Fresh extruded pasta is rare – even in high-end restaurants – given the high cost of the machines.) There’s also a chickpea-based gluten-free pasta made by Melbourne’s Goodness Catering.

The wine list is short, consisting mostly of Italian bottles. There are also a couple of local bottles, from the Yarra Valley.

The restaurant is light with no-fuss décor, and a painting formerly owned by the late acclaimed auteur and South Melbourne resident Paul Cox hangs by the bar. The building dates to the 1880s.

A wrought-iron arm extends from the frontage above the front door with three copper balls hanging from it – the European signpost for a pawnbroker. And when you dine outside you’ll have a beautiful old Town Hall.