Stellini Bar

Stellini Bar

198 Little Collins St, Melbourne

(Ph) 9654 5074

☆☆☆

I was going to come here for brunch with J about 2 weeks ago but something came up and we cancelled our catch up - this week she had clinic in the morning so we were gonna go for lunch instead. Stellini bar had ☆☆☆ in the Cheap Eats Guide for breakfast, but in the caption, they were mentioning "big-flavoured southern Italian fare such as pork and fennel lasagne with home-made pasta and double-layers of bechamel". Even though I had lasagne only 2 days ago at Pelligrini's, I knew I had to try this one out =)

We sat at the long communal table 'cause all the little tables were taken at 1pm - but we didn't mind since the small tables wouldn't have fitted all our food very well and the long table was empty when we got there :)

We both wanted pastas 'cause it was such a cold wintry day and a nice pasta would definitely warm us up!

Pork and fennel lasagne with insalata mista

My lasagne was definitely worth ☆☆☆. Pork and fennel sounded like such a weird combination but after reading so much about it I had to try it! It came just the way the Cheap Eats Guide described it - big flavours =) They were such clashing yet complimentary flavours! And I absolutely love the bechamel sauce between the layers of pasta - I'm such a sucker for sauce as well (as you can probably tell from my previous post of Pelligrini's :P)

Gnocchi

J tried the Gnocchi with pomodoro and pecorino (I think it was - I forgot to take a photo of the menu again so tried to look for it online - don't think they've changed the menu, though when I tried to look up what 'pomodoro' was, no ingredient came up =P). Nonetheless, she dug in straight away - I could tell it was super delicious the way we both stopped talking for a few minutes and just ate and ate :P

Complimentary bread with REAL butter :)

I love receiving complimentary bread, especially with real butter! Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside - I'm such a sucker for bread! :P And it was perfect for dipping our pasta sauces with <3

We sat for at least an hour after our plates were taken away - I was waiting for my stomach to settle so I could try the Tiramisu but really could not fit it in after the bread and the lasagne! Customers started coming in for coffee instead of lunch and that was when we realised the time had passed so quickly :P The door to the cafe doesn't close by itself so you have to manually close it after you. So many customers didn't do that so we were frozen by the freezing Melbourne wind - that was a bit annoying. After a while we couldn't stand it anymore so we paid and left - and that was when we realised there was no handle to the door from the outside so it's no wonder people didn't close the door after themselves! That really needs fixing =P

The lasagne was $19.50 which I think was definitely worth it - but it had gone up from $15.50 since 2010 (which I found out from various blogs). Oh well, that's what happens when delicious foods becomes famous!

8/10

C.
xo