Lygon Street is the spine of Carlton's Little Italy and the most famous eating strip in Australia, running roughly north–south through the suburb with the densest concentration of restaurants, cafés and gelaterias between Grattan Street and Elgin Street. It became the heart of Italian Melbourne after the Second World War, when southern Italian migration transformed the strip, and it has kept the role since — even as some of the long-standing institutions have given way to newer arrivals.
Quality on the strip is uneven. The well-known restaurants on the western footpath — Tiamo, Brunetti for coffee and pastry, the slightly old-school red-sauce trattorie — are reliable rather than transcendent. For the genuinely good Italian cooking in Carlton, look at the side streets and at the second wave of restaurants that have opened in the past decade further south along the strip.