On a recent Saturday night, the strip throngs with a million Melbourne stories. Students line up for chicken parmigianas at perennially busy Universal.<\/strong> A hotted-up V8 vrooms past Papa Gino\u2019s<\/strong> pizza place like a big-haired messenger from the 1980s. Date-nighters debate: will it be pistachio gelato from Pidapipo<\/strong> or a durian scoop from Indonesian-leaning ice-cream shop Beku?<\/strong> At El Giza<\/strong>, men suck on shisha pipes and order halal doner kebab pizza. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At Johnny\u2019s Green Room,<\/strong> on King and Godfree\u2019s rooftop, Sbardella reflects on the changes. \u201cWe stood here five years ago, just after we renovated, looked down at the street and half the shops were vacant,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had just 10 people up here. We asked ourselves what we had done.\u201d Now there are lines out the door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMelbourne loves its eat streets, more than any other town I know,\u201d says Sbardella. \u201cWhen you have a high level of service and offering, it makes the next venue be that little bit better. It keeps building and building. We\u2019ve seen that here.\u201d That push to improve flows through the whole street. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s always been an important food strip,\u201d says Michael Harden, author of the 2008 book Lygon Street: Stories And Recipes From Melbourne\u2019s Melting Pot<\/em>. Surveyed as part of the original Hoddle Grid in 1852, the street was Melbourne\u2019s Jewish centre from the 1890s: you could use your Yiddish to buy a kosher chicken in the shtetl in ek velt<\/em> (little town at the end of the world).<\/p>\n\n\n\n After World War II, Italian migrants gradually overtook the Jews. By 1960, about a quarter of Carlton\u2019s population was Italian. Restaurateur Marco Donnini\u2019s grandparents arrived in 1952 and his family installed Melbourne\u2019s first proper espresso machine in their\u00a0University Cafe<\/strong>. \u201cNo one knew what it was,\u201d says Donnini. \u201cThey created a little Italian ghetto where everyone felt comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1966, Stephanie Alexander and her then-husband Rupert \u201cMonty\u201d Montague wanted to open a Jamaican foodstore. \u201cLygon Street was the obvious choice,\u201d she says. \u201cCarlton was the centre of anything interesting in the way of food and people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the decades, heart-and-soul cooking gave way to more commercial operations. At the same time, lax planning meant no limit on the number of restaurants. \u201cThe strip closer to the city became lined with cookie-cutter restaurants, the bohemia moved to Brunswick Street and St Kilda; Lygon Street felt grimy and touristy,\u201d Harden says. The original mid-century immigrants were ageing, and their kids often moved further afield. With pizza and pasta all over Melbourne, and new eat streets burgeoning, Lygon Street became less compelling, for Italian food anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018There\u2019s nowhere else as enduring and exciting as Lygon Street.\u2019Luca Sbardella<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In the past decade, a new spark has come from international students moving to the northern CBD and Carlton, near the University of Melbourne. \u201cA lot of students don\u2019t cook in their apartments,\u201d says Donnini. \u201cThey may not spend much, but they go out five nights a week.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The southern portion of Lygon Street caters to those thrifty students with places such as Universal and\u00a0D\u2019Penyetz<\/strong>. Halal\u00a0Mandina Kitchen,<\/strong>\u00a0which serves Yemeni food, is part of a new clutch of restaurants catering to Muslim diners. North of Grattan Street, classic but spirited Italian restaurants such as\u00a0University Cafe<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Donnini\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0have innovative new neighbours like\u00a0Lagoon<\/strong>and\u00a0Madeleine de Proust.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For Lygon Street lifers, it\u2019s an exciting era. \u201cThere\u2019s nowhere else as enduring and exciting as Lygon Street,\u201d Sbardella says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/interactive\/modules\/graphic-embed\/?resizable=true&v=390&configUrl=https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/interactive\/hub\/configs\/graphic-embed\/28030.json&v=0.9012553785860735<\/p>\n\n\n\n They call themselves \u201ca slow restaurant on a fast street\u201d, which goes some way to describing two-hatted Kazuki\u2019s calm, intentional approach to hospitality. Their style of Japanese fine dining is expressed over five- or seven-course tasting menus<\/a>, offered with beautiful wine and sake matches, and with a deft melding of Japanese and French cooking and premium Australian produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 121 Lygon Street, Carlton, kazukis.com.au<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n See that person holding their hand over their chicken parmigiana as though they\u2019re some kind of energy healer? Well, they\u2019re (most likely) not a reiki master. They\u2019re checking if this $17.90 main course really is as big as their hand. (Answer: it is.) Universal has been serving Italian comfort food since 1969 and the menu here is a pizza-pasta-parma parade. Though the offering is similar to other classic restaurants on the strip, clever updates such as Bubblegum Sour cocktails and Nutella tiramisu draw a younger crowd. Lining up has become part of the experience and cheery waiters work the queue with free tidbits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Kazuki\u2019s<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Universal Restaurant<\/h2>\n\n\n\n