Member Review by Mullsy

There aren't too many Italian restaurants along Lygon Street where you don't get touted. From the looks of things, Il Gambero does not need to do this as the place was packed - inside and out. Fortunately, due to some luck and what we observed later to be a fairly quick, cafe-style turnaround time (mainly due to prompt, yet attentive service as opposed to rushed), we were able to score a table for seven.

Apparently, this place is a bit of an institution as it's managed to stay open for nearly 40 years. It's now run by Frank Dimattina, who played for Richmond in the 60's.

This is your basic Italian restautant menu. An extensive list of pizzas (standard and a few gourmet varieties), plenty of pastas, plus the usual seafood and carne dishes - all served with veggies.

We were there for one thing and one thing only. To fill our tums in between beers and prior to a night dancing our a*ses off, i.e. carbs and plenty of red to wash it down with.

After a couple of servings of garlic bread... Oh and garlic bread the way it should be: toasted one side, garlicky and buttery. None of this pizza base bread roll business. Anyway, the mains. All people were satisfied. A mate and I both went for gnocchi. This was the best gnocchi I've had. It was feather light and not over worked. I chose a marinara style sauce with a good combination of scallops, prawns, calamari, napoli sauce, wine and (as requested) extra garlic. My mate was more than happy with his gnocchi napolitana.

The GF devoured her Vitallo Funghi: Two decent sized, moist and very tender portions of scalloped veal, pan fried with mushrooms, garlic and rosemary served with a white wine jus. The others dined mainly on other pasta dishes and all plates were empty by close of play. One one pizza-goer; a British bloke and his first taste of Australian pizza passed with flying colours.

Oh yeah, the red. Lashings of red. We polished off four bottles of Wynns Coonawarra Cabernet Shiraz Merlot. And at $28 per bottle, is a bargain.

Bill split. $32 each. Content. Happy and fuelled for a night carving up the dance floor.