Located just opposite to the beach in a beautiful venue sits La Baia Bar Cucina, a new kid on the block that serves Italian cuisine. Friday nights are live jazz nights BUT we were luckily enough to go on a Saturday night which had a once off jazz night due to the restaurant having a full house. SCORE! There’s quite a bit of parking on the street so you don’t have to fret about parking. Entering the venue, the staff were very warm, welcoming and very professional and led us to our table to start our night.
I absolutely love yabbies and was excited that you could get them either hot or cold , we chose cold. Unfortunately the yabbies looked a bit sad and the meat inside was all kinda mushed and didn’t really taste super fresh which was disappointing.
Fresh Water Yabbies – $26
Mr D ALWAYS gets chippies everywhere we go and this place was no exception. The chippies were fresh, crunchy and perfectly seasoned. Great to snack on while we waited for the rest of our meal.
Hand Crafted Potato Chips – $12
If you’re a fan of cabonara, La Baia Bar Cucina makes the BEST cabonara that I’ve tasted in Melbourne. It wasn’t too rich, it was full of flavour and that tagliatelle pasta was perfect and definitely handmade. IT. WAS. TOTES. AMAZEBALLS!
Tagliatelle Cabonara – $24
Guanciale, onion, garlic, egg, parmigiano
We also got the frutti di mare stone oven pizza which had tiger prawns, calamari, scallops on a pizza base. This was AWESOME SAUCE. It wasn’t too tomato-y, the basil gave it a freshness and seafood was juicy, plump and oh so fresh. That pizza base was thin, fluffy and had a spring to it. LOVED EVERYTHING ABOUT IT.
Frutti Di Mare – $24
tomato, fior di latte, calamari, tiger prawns, scallops, garlic & fresh basil
To end the night we got the vanilla bean panna cotta and the tiramisu. The vanilla bean panna cotta was oh so jiggly and you can definitely taste the vanilla bean. It was so smooth and delicate, I devoured it.
Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta – $12
Mr D had the tiramisu and thought it was quite average and didn’t really wow him.
Tiramisu – $14
La Baia Bar Cucina serves up amazing Italian food in a beautiful venue with a gorgeous view of the beach. The one thing that did irk us was that the service was very slow. It took over 50 minutes for our mains to come out after the entrees and we had to continually ask for our meals. Other then that, definitely come for the cabonara and stay for the jazz night.
Disclaimer: I was invited to dine by La Baia Bar Cucina and all opinions expressed are my own.
16/123 Beaconsfield Parade, Albert Park VIC 3206
Tel: (03) 9042 2251
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