Tippy-Tay

Overview

Located within the historical Garden State Hotel on Flinders Lane, Tippy-Tay is Melbourne's love letter to the coastlines of Italy. Walk across the yellow and green brick-framed threshold of this stylish trattoria and be transported immediately to the Mediterranean.

The menu embraces everything that we love about Italian food: simple, well-sourced ingredients and dishes designed to share. Start your meal with freshly shucked oysters, octopus 'salami' or pumpkin and goat's cheese arancini. Move onto antipasti with wagyu carpaccio, yellowfin tuna or parmesan custard with radicchio, orange, and hazelnuts. Pasta dishes include a classic spanner crab fusilli or Manjimup truffle and porcini mafaldine — or try something a little different with two-sheet lasagne verde with slipper lobster, prawn, mussels and scallops in a white sauce.

Tippy-Tay is slinging pizzas like the lobster diavola with slipper lobster, 'nduja, cherry tomato, chilli and garlic alongside classics like margherita and cacio e pepe. Mains include options like grilled swordfish with golden olive caponata and fennel, roasted eggplant with chickpeas, tomato and chilli, and 250-gram Jack's Creek bavette steak with rocket and parmesan. Can't decide what to eat? Go for the 'Feed Me Menu' — there's even an option to add three paired wines and a limoncello to finish.

If you're thirsty, there's plenty to choose from on the drinks menu. There is a thoughtfully curated wine list that heroes Italian grapes with a couple of vinos from South Australia, Victoria and New Zealand. The cocktail menu features the classics like negroni and margarita, as well as some house creations such as the frozen limoncello — made with Tippy-Tay's own limoncello — and frozen Malfy G&T, Tippy-Tay's OG cocktail made with Malfy blood orange gin, pineapple, citrus and tonic.