On our short visit to Melbourne, Australia, my (Chris) relative CL kindly led us on a walking tour through the central business district and along the Yarra river. We paused for a break at this famous Italian coffee and-cake spot on Flinders Lane, one of the city’s key “eat streets”, with a high concentration of well-known diners, wine bars and cafes.
Enjoy a tune while browsing.
Flinders Lane is a narrow, one-way street lined with mid-rise heritage warehouses and commercial buildings, many from the early 1900’s, now converted into offices, apartments, galleries and eateries.
Brunetti is one of Melbourne’s most recognisable Italian cafés, a pasticceria that has grown from a neighbourhood cake shop into a small empire of espresso bars and dessert counters. We were at Brunetti Oro, the “new chapter” of the Brunetti story, spun out in 2021 when the original family business split into two arms.
Brunetti’s story traces back to Roman pastry chef Giorgio Angelè, who came to Melbourne in 1956 with the Italian Olympic culinary team and stayed on to open his own cake shop, eventually buying a little Carlton café called Brunetti in 1991.
In the years that followed, Brunetti’s Carlton base expanded from a modest pasticceria into a sprawling food hall with separate counters for gelato, cakes, panini and pizza. The brand pushed beyond Lygon Street to CBD locations such as City Square and Flinders Lane.
In August 2021, after about three decades of operating as a single group, the Brunetti business formally split. Brothers Fabio and Yuri Angelè divided the empire into two arms: Brunetti Classico, centred on the original Carlton “spiritual home”, and Brunetti Oro, which leans into a premium, design-driven concept.
We were impressed not only by the freshly-baked deliciousness of the pastries but also by the abundance and varieties.
As we walked in, we were immediately surrounded by walls of cakes. The place was packed, with people eagerly picking out their favorites, and we were lucky to snag a table to rest our feet and enjoy ours.
The Brunetti Oro flagship where we were at was designed by Technē, and connects Collins Street to Flinders Lane with a sequence of spaces: open kitchen, horseshoe coffee bar, dessert and gelato counters, and sit-down dining.
The big black-and-white mural behind the main coffee bar is the visual anchor of the whole space. It’s a long, mid-century-influenced line drawing that reads as a stylised Italian street-and-café scene, a bit Fellini-ish cinematic.
The mural, by Brazilian illustrator Filipe Jardim, was commissioned specifically to suggest a 1950s–60s Italian modernist vibe and an idealized café scene. After all, this shop sits in Australia and is filled mostly with local and Asian customers, so the artwork has to do some of the work of evoking an Italian atmosphere.
A little further along, we spotted an empty storefront with a similarly stylized café line drawing. We couldn’t help thinking they’d borrowed the idea from Brunetti — but either way, it makes for a very charming street.
Melbourne is a fascinating city that barely registers up here in the Northern Hemisphere, but we plan to fix that – we’ve got plenty of photos from our trip down under.
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