I had an italian inspired homestyle dish at Mama Baba's. It was the first time that I have been at this place and I found it a bit too expensive for me. It gets very busy. They offer Italian and Greek cuisine. Meals are abundant and leave you filling full but I suppose that's why you pay so much money for them!

This is George Calombaris's new restaurant. My partner and i went there last thursday night while on holiday in Melbourne.

The building has a very cool funky kind of warehouse feel. There was a DJ behind the bar, which i have never seen at a restaurant before.

When we arrived our table was not ready so they seated us at the bar for some pre dinner drinks. It was very busy.

We were seated on a small round table with lounge chairs. (as the night went on and we started recieving our meals, we felt very squashed on the tiny table).

The mains on the menu are divided into two sections, Mama and Baba, to represent his heritage. On the mama side were cypriot inspired dishes, and on the baba side were italian inspired dishes. We thought this was very clever. We could relate to the menu because combined we have cypriot/greek/italian backrounds.

They offer a mama menu if you can not decide what to order, it is a four course meal for a very reasonable price of $55 per person, you get to try a little bit of everything.

Entrees: Salmon, ricotta and arancini balls. They were all fantastic.

Pasta: 2 pasta dishes, prawn ravioli and a mushroom dish. We did not enjoy the ravioli, but the mushroom one was quite nice.

Mains: Braised beef cheeks, polenta, fish and a pea salad. All of it was very tasty.

Dessert: Italian mess, kind of like a pavlova with crumble, pommigranite and marscapone, and two little donuts with chocolate. It was delicious.

We found it to be fantastic value for the amount of food we recieved, we left feeling very full.

Also halfway through our meal George Calombaris walked in, he met masterchef runner up Julia at the bar for a drink. That was exciting. That was a great ending to our Melbourne trip.

This place is definitely worth visiting.