One of Melbourne’s pioneering Italian restaurants is up for sale

Restaurant power couple Rinaldo Di Stasio and Mallory Wall have placed Cafe Di Stasio in St Kilda, the standard-setting Italian diner they have owned for 38 years, up for sale.

Wall says the pair decided to offload the restaurant for a “combination of reasons” including two new projects in Italy and the fact they also want to concentrate on the other two venues they operate in the city and Carlton.

“Emotionally, it was a hard decision to make, but it has not been fiscally sensible to keep Cafe Di Stasio open,” Wall said.

“We want to be spending more time in Italy, but when we are in Melbourne, we do not want to be spreading ourselves thinly between three restaurants. Three restaurants here was never part of our long-term plan,” she said.

Since opening in Fitzroy Street in 1988, Cafe Di Stasio operated at the forefront of Melbourne dining with its white-jacketed waiters, classical Italian cuisine and theatrically elegant take on a big night out. Adjoining the restaurant, Bar Di Stasio was added in 2013.

It’s one of a small brigade of venues such as Stephanie’s, Mietta’s, Marios and Marchetti’s Latin that helped carve Victoria’s place on the international culinary map.

It has been a rough journey since COVID, though. In late 2023, “Ronnie” Di Stasio and Wall, partners in business and life, embarked on an extensive overhaul of the space, which had lain semi-shuttered since the pandemic. They planned to add an art gallery above a revitalised restaurant and bar.

“I’m going in boots and all to St Kilda,” Di Stasio said at the time. “We have to make it work … It reminds me of when I first took it over, failure was no option. You put everything into it.”

The renaissance of Cafe Di Stasio was heralded as a boost to St Kilda’s beleaguered Fitzroy Street, which has been littered with “for lease” signs and plagued by successive restaurant closures and traffic problems for a decade.

The gallery was due to open in 2024 with new artwork by internationally recognised artist and friend of Di Stasio, Shaun Gladwell.

Gladwell’s new artwork Spazio Tarocchi is now being displayed at Di Stasio Citta, the sleek, brutalist, Murano chandelier-adorned venue that opened on Spring Street in 2019.

Neither Citta or Di Stasio’s Carlton offshoot, opened in 2021, are affected by this sale. Citta has two chef’s hats in the current Age Good Food Guide, Carlton has one.

“Putting Di Stasio St Kilda on the market was overdue. Hanging on to it was really a bit of an indulgence,” Wall says. The couple received two offers on the St Kilda restaurant since 2020.

The sale, which does not include the Di Stasio name, has “absolutely nothing to do with” a $1 million debt owing to the Australian Tax office reported in October last year, Wall says.

At the time, two of Di Stasio’s companies were served with winding-up applications and given 21 days to settle the tax debts after allegedly failing to comply with business activity statement provisions, Federal Court documents revealed.

The court action came a little over a year after the 71-year-old Di Stasio sold his 32-hectare property in the Yarra Valley for $7 million.

The ATO was chasing a $200,000 tax debt from the St Kilda venue, while the CBD restaurant had accrued more than $710,000 in debt.

“The dispute with the ATO has been resolved, shut down and was finalised in 2025,” Wall says. Federal Court documents confirm this.

She is tight-lipped about the pair’s plans in Italy other than to say they are embarking upon a “wine project” in the Piedmont region and an ongoing project in Venice and Di Stasio’s hometown of Naples.

Anthea Loucas Bosha, CEO of Food + Drink Victoria, paid tribute to Cafe Di Stasio’s contribution to Melbourne’s dining scene.

“This is very sad news. With their meticulous attention to detail and very specific view of hospitality, Ronnie and Mallory laid the groundwork for a very Melbourne dining experience that so many others followed,” Loucas Bosha said.

The beef carpaccio-serving, barolo-pouring, contemporary art-loving restaurant withstood cyclical St Kilda’s rocky fortunes and endless dining trends to remain an essential Melbourne dining experience for three decades.

“It was the kind of place that accidentally gave you a sense of occasion on every visit,” said chef Karen Martini. “You felt like the most important table in the room every time you went.”

“It inspired a generation of dark, sexily lit Italian restaurants after it, and is still inspiring me at Bar Carolina [in South Yarra],” Martini said.

Wall would not reveal the price tag on the restaurant but said, “if we do not get the right price, we will take it off the market”.