Davelona is a restaurant on Dandenong Road in Chadstone where the menu is written the morning the market delivery lands, and the pasta is rolled by hand.
We do not print a fixed menu. The chef drives to the market each morning, buys around what looks best, and the evening's dishes get written over coffee before service prep starts. It sounds loose but it takes years of practice to pull off, and it is the reason the food tastes like it came from somewhere rather than from a supplier.
More About UsThe menu follows the produce, not the other way around. Roughly 80 percent of what we cook was picked within 48 hours.
Everything is finished on one line, twelve steps from the table. You can watch the plate come together and ask why it happened that way.
Around 400 bottles, mostly Victorian and Italian. We buy by the six-pack and rotate often so nothing sits too long.
The room is built around one long table and a handful of two-seaters. Groups of eight fit without squeezing anyone in.
Four views of the space, the pass and the courtyard. The room seats eighteen and takes one booking at a time in the evening.
The chef's table began in 2016 as a way of feeding friends of the kitchen on quiet Sundays. Word got out, the waitlist stretched to three months, and the experiment became a permanent fixture. The pasta school came three years later after a winter of teaching staff to roll dough properly.
We have kept the room small on purpose. Eighteen seats means one cook can plate every dish that leaves the pass, and it means we can change the menu at seven in the morning without panicking. Nothing here is scaled up for the sake of a bigger night.
A short look at dishes that have been on rotation recently. The actual menu changes daily, so treat this as a rough idea rather than a fixed list.
Snapper cured nine hours in citrus salt, sliced thin and finished with shaved fennel and oil pressed from the orange peel.
Semolina dough rolled thin enough to see your hand through it, cut by knife, served under a beef and pork ragu cooked down over a full day.
Whole quail brined overnight, roasted to order and rested on pine mushrooms that arrived the same morning.
A fixture since the first Sunday sitting. Honey taken right to the edge of bitter, set in a thin butter pastry.
Lettuce halved and grilled hard on the cut side, then dressed with anchovy butter and a generous grate of pecorino.
Filled pasta made on the day, sauced in the same pan with sage picked from the courtyard planter.
Both run in the same room but feel completely different. One is a slow evening at the chef's table, the other is four hours with flour on your hands.
Seven courses over roughly three and a half hours, cooked and finished in front of a group of six to fourteen. The menu is written the morning of your booking and texted to you before you arrive.
Four hours at the bench with a maximum of eight students. Two dough bases, five shapes, sauces built alongside, and you eat what you made at the long table when the cooking is done.
The chef's table sits close enough that you can smell the butter browning. Every plate is handed over with a short explanation of where the produce came from, and you can stand up between courses, walk the kitchen and ask why the snapper was cured for nine hours.
Poured at the table and swapable for anything in the same price band if something does not land.
Whole-room bookings move up to nine plates and get a menu collaboration session two weeks out.
The room is yours for the whole evening. Nobody else gets seated while you are at the table.
Vegan and gluten-free courses are built as their own dishes rather than stripped-back copies of the main menu.
The masterclass runs in our working kitchen before service, so you are using the same benches the cooks use on a Friday night. Eight benches, one instructor, and enough repetition to feel the difference between dough that is ready and dough that is not.
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Mixing the egg dough by hand
Cutting tagliatelle and nesting it
Filled pasta waiting for the pot
Eating what you made
The same routine runs whether you are booking a table for two or taking the whole room for an evening. Only the scale changes.
Call, email or send the form on this page. We hold a table for 48 hours while you decide.
Dietary notes need to land four days out so the kitchen can source around them rather than improvise on the night.
Headcount, arrival time and any drinks preference get locked in. You receive written confirmation by email.
The chef builds the evening around the delivery that just arrived. You get the dishes by text before you leave home.
Plates come out at a steady pace. Nobody gets rushed out at a set hour and the courtyard stays open if the weather is kind.
Six views from the past year of service, from the cellar wall to the courtyard after dark.
The main table, set for the evening
Plating happens on the open line
Cured snapper, blood orange, fennel
Around 400 bottles behind the kitchen
Burnt honey tart, our longest-standing dish
Courtyard tables stay open after the last course
A few comments pulled from recent bookings and class feedback forms.
We booked the chef's table for a birthday and it turned into the best meal any of us had eaten in years. The cured snapper alone was worth the trip out to Chadstone.
Took the pasta class on a Saturday morning with zero experience. Four hours later I had made ravioli that actually held its shape. The take-home rolling pin has been used every week since.
Small room, no fuss, food that changes every time we come in. We have been four times now and never eaten the same dish twice. The wine list is short but put together with real thought.
Short pieces on produce, technique and the way we run service at Davelona. Two of the most recent are below.
Why the menu gets written after the morning delivery lands, and what it takes to run a kitchen that can pivot before service prep starts.
Students arrive expecting hard technique. What they actually learn in the masterclass is that dough rewards waiting more than knife work.
No daily emails, no special offers you did not ask for. Just one short message each month with what is coming into the kitchen and when the next round of classes opens.
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Tell us your date, headcount and any dietary notes and we will come back within one business day. If you are working to a short window, call the restaurant and ask for the booking desk.
A short walk from the shopping centre, with street parking on the side roads after 6pm and a tram stop three minutes away.
Book a standard dinner table, take the private chef's table for a group, or spend four hours learning fresh pasta with your hands in the flour.