This overhauled Italian restaurant leans in to the thing Lygon Street does best

“Welcome to Delmonte, the restaurant for every occasion,” our waiter enthused on a recent Tuesday evening. We were seated in the middle of the large room that, for more than a century, was King & Godfree, though the memory of that overstuffed magical space is hard to conjure in this somewhat cavernous iteration.

Delmonte is part of the second major overhaul of the King & Godfree corner, a process that began in 2013. In 2015, the storied grocer and purveyor of Italian smallgoods closed and completed major renovations. Three years later, it reopened as a cafe and deli and sit-down restaurant, Agostino. In 2024, another closure and new renovations were announced.

Over recent months, the latest iterations of the King & Godfree legacy were revealed: Garfield, a Tokyo-inspired pizzeria, and Delmonte, for which owner Jamie Valmorbida (of the Valmorbida family, which has operated the business since the 1950s) brought on Karen Martini as culinary director.

The room is outfitted in creamy, sandy colours, lots of tiles and mid-century curves, along with caramel leather banquettes and wooden tables. There’s plenty of seating at a long zinc bar, and the expansive menu lends itself to a variety of uses, including stopping in for some oily, pillowy focaccia with dips and charcuterie, alongside a glass of wine, but customers don’t seem to be using it that breezily yet.

The open kitchen is run by executive chef Mark Glenn and head chef Diana Desensi, who was most recently the opening chef at Daphne in Brunswick East (and who worked with Martini at Saint George in St Kilda).

There are so many ways to get your nibble on here and it’s hard to know where to start – it’s as if they took the infinite options of King & Godfree as a deli and turned that into a menu. Antipasti include a wide variety of charcuterie, cheeses, dips. There are fried snacky things, like a crispy, oily, extremely fun fried zucchini entree, heated with chilli and cooled with yoghurt.

Large, wild-caught prawns seem a bit pricey at $44 for two, but that’s my only complaint – the crustaceans are bouncy, creamy, fire-kissed and bathed in a perky salsa verde with a whisper of heat.

The pasta selection is almost surprising in its brevity, listing only four options, all of them relatively by-the-book. There’s a mixed seafood situation, spaghetti pomodoro with stracciatella and a tagliatelle bolognese. Most interesting is the gnocchetti with mushroom ragu, which might more aptly be called a fricassee of mushrooms with gnocchetti – the medley of mushrooms is more accompanied by the dumplings than the other way around.

Big hunks of meat might be this kitchen’s specialty, best represented by a massive pork costoletta, all crisp breaded and fried exterior and juicy interior, and easily shareable between three people or more. (I recommend the gem lettuce and cucumber salad on the side; its vinegary, cool crispness is a fantastic foil.)

The (excellent) staff were adamant we should try the crepes al forno, which are traditionally savoury but served here as dessert with ricotta and mandarin. They seemed more pancake than crepe to me, but I like my fried batter at any thickness.

Delmonte reminds me of the better American-Italian chain restaurants that cater to date nights and special occasions at the fancier malls dotting the US suburbs. The cooking here is better, but the function is similar: deliver a wide selection of crowd-pleasers, in a room that feels fancy but not too uptight, in order to cater to as many types of diners as possible.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and in many ways the venue is simply carrying on the honorable tradition of Lygon Street’s populism – this is a modernised version of the big, all-are-welcome eating houses that have lined the street for most of the last century. I’m not sure if it’s special enough, different enough, to warrant huge excitement and loyalty. But then again, maybe leaning into the thing this street does best – Italian for the people, for every occasion – is exactly the right move.

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