The Hardware Club

The room upstairs at 43 Hardware Lane was a social club for city workers in the 1920s, and it took two childhood friends from Verona to put a kitchen back in it.

Why go

Nicola Dusi and Andrea Ceriani arrived in Melbourne from Verona and spent nine years in other people's kitchens, between them D.O.C Pizzeria, Baby Pizza, Chin Chin and +39 Pizzeria, before opening this as their first venture in October 2019 (Concrete Playground). Dusi runs the kitchen. The pasta list rotates while the rest of the menu stays put, so the amatriciana with pork jowl and pecorino is a moving target and the osso buco ravioli is the one worth asking after. Sixty-five seats sit above the laneway with a bar looking over it, which matters because the strip below is Melbourne's most touted and least interesting dining block.

Order this / avoid

• Order: a negroni at the front bar, then whichever pasta is running. Osso buco ravioli if it is on, and the whole coil of fennel and chilli sausage with silverbeet and chilli oil for a table. Sixteen-month prosciutto di Parma with pickles works for a drink and a bite.
• Avoid: Sunday, when nothing opens. Do not judge it by the spruikers downstairs.

What locals & experts say

• Libby Curran, Concrete Playground (2019), on the building: "The site of an old 1920s social club for workers in the CBD has reopened as a contemporary and comforting Italian restaurant." Note this is an opening announcement rather than a review, so it reports the room rather than judging the food. ref
• The same piece on the menu's shape: a daytime offering of small bites, classic pizzas, a handful of mains and "a rotating lineup of pasta", with dinner adding marrow bones with salsa verde and baked rainbow trout with creme fraiche and Yarra Valley roe. ref
• The venue on itself: "Bar & dine-in Italian specialities", upstairs, lunch Monday to Friday and dinner Monday to Saturday. ref
• Nothing since 2019. Searched on 1 August 2026: no review, no award listing, and no chef in Melbourne's 74-pick corpus names it. That is the honest state of the evidence and it is why this entry is filed as one to tighten.

Good to know

• Where: upstairs at 43 Hardware Lane, Melbourne.
• Timing: lunch Monday to Friday, dinner Monday to Saturday. Closed Sunday.
• Booking: recommended. A set menu and functions are offered for groups.
• Food safety: no entry for this business on Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions as at its 21 July 2026 update. ref
• Near MCEC: a possible walk. Hardware Lane is about 1.5km from South Wharf.

Jeff's take (his words)

None. Melbourne has no raw saved-places export under places-db/melbourne/data/, so jeff_note stays empty rather than being composed.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Go if you are on Hardware Lane and want to get off it. The room upstairs at number 43 was a social club for city workers in the 1920s, and Nicola Dusi and Andrea Ceriani, childhood friends from Verona, reopened it as their first restaurant in October 2019. Between them they had cooked at D.O.C Pizzeria, Baby Pizza, Chin Chin and +39. Sixty-five seats, a bar over the laneway, a pasta list that rotates while the rest of the menu holds still, and a drinks list that is Italian to the bone: negronis, Venetian spritzes, Montenegro and tonic. The osso buco ravioli and the whole coil of fennel and chilli sausage are the dishes worth the trip up the stairs. It sits at could-visit because that is genuinely where the evidence lands: one bylined opening piece from 2019, nothing since, no award, no review and no chef pointing at it.