15 May Brunetti Oro Flinders Lane – Melbourne’s most indulgent Italian cafe
If you are looking for somewhere nice for a first date, somewhere to take a visitor out of town to for dessert after dinner, or if you want to get a particularly special birthday cake for a special friend you might want to consider Brunetti city.
There are cafes you go to for a quiet coffee, and then there is the experience of Brunetti Oro on Flinders Lane — a 300-seat Italian cathedral of pastry, gelato, pasta and Aperol spritzes that buzzes from breakfast through to late night, seven days a week.
If you know Brunetti from its original Carlton home on Lygon Street, the Brunetti’s Flinders Lane incarnation will feel both familiar and entirely new. Forced out of its longstanding Collins Street café due to works on Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel, the Italian institution landed itself new and significantly improved digs — a sprawling venue between Flinders Lane and Collins Street, with brass accents, sleek marble and a mural of an Italian town square painted by illustrator Filipe Jardim. It is, in a word, spectacular.
Food and drink
The pastry cabinet is where most visits begin and, for many people, where they end. The cabinets are filled with extraordinary cakes and pastries — profriterole doughnuts, custard-filled cannoli, moulten chocolate cake with raspberries — alongside the classics that have made Brunetti famous over decades: tiramisu, lemon meringue tart, New York cheesecake, and a gelato bar that has an appetising array of different flavours.
A sweet treat from Brunetti can be a wonderful accompaniment to a pot of tea or cup of coffee – the tea is slightly disappointing as a pot of boiling water and a tea bag, rather than brewed leaves but the coffee (Lavazza) is good (however, not organic) and I have seen people being served the most interesting of drinks, so I believe the drinks menu could be a whole world of exploration.
Beyond the sweets, executive savoury chef Edmund Teh has brought a more considered food menu to the Brunetti’s Flinders Lane venue, with full breakfast, lunch and dinner options alongside the pastry offering. Think housemade pasta, pizza with a properly crispy base, arancini, focaccia stuffed and baked to order.
Alcoholic drinks
Alongside the standard drinks menu available throughout the restaurant, the dedicated Campari bar is a wonderfully atmospheric place to sip on an Aperol Spritz — and honestly this is one of the better places in the CBD to have one. There’s something about the scale and the energy of the room that makes a spritz feel entirely appropriate at almost any hour.
The Brunetti city space
The venue seats 300 and the fit-out was inspired by the gelato bars of 1950s and 60s Italy — that sun-drenched Amalfi aesthetic rendered in and the kind of brass and marble detailing that makes the place feel genuinely considered rather than generic.
It’s loud. It’s busy. It is never, on any day of the week, quiet. If you want a hushed corner café experience this is not your place. But if you want to feel like you’ve stepped briefly into a Roman pasticceria — vibrant, slightly overwhelming, full of beautiful things to eat — Brunetti Oro delivers that completely.
Practical Details
Address: 250 Flinders Lane, Melbourne CBD
Hours: 7am to midnight daily — one of the few genuinely late-night options in the CBD
Bookings: not accepted – walk ins only
Good for: Breakfast, lunch, afternoon cake, post-theatre supper or dessert, Aperol spritz at any hour, celebration cakes to take home, gelato on the way back to wherever you’re going, a date, an afternoon stop between galleries, somewhere to bring a visitor from out of town for dessert
Price point: Pastries and coffee $8-18, mains $22-36, very reasonable for the CBD and the quality
One thing to know: Order at the counter, drinks are picked up at the bar, food is brought to the table. It can get very busy on weekend mornings — going slightly earlier or later than peak lunch avoids the worst of the wait for a table.
Brunetti city is not a hidden gem — it’s a Melbourne institution that doesn’t need your help getting discovered. But if you haven’t been to the Flinders Lane version specifically, it’s worth knowing that this is a genuinely unique version of the Brunetti most people know. The space alone is worth a visit. The tiramisu is reason enough to come back.
Brunetti Oro Flinders Lane, 250 Flinders Lane, Melbourne CBD. Open daily 7am–midnight. brunettioro.com.au
The experience
Sitting in the covered forecourt of the shop, surrounded by vines, climbing up the trellis facing the street and in front of Art Deco curvilinear windows and we ate cake and drank tea and chatted about plans for the next year and favourite things from the ones just gone.
Brunetti Oro in Flinders Lane has some very fun music, from upbeat lounge pop to Italo Neopolitan to electronica.
It is such a lovely atmosphere that adds a touch of glamour to a bite of dessert, a sneaky alcoholic drink or a coffee.
It is always a nice place to bring friends or family from out of town – the desserts are delicious and sitting outside or in the semi-enclosed front area has a wonderful ambience in any season.
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