Melbourne, Australia

Zagame's House

Price per night from$119.33

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (AUD182.79), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

House blend

Setting

Corner of Carlton

It’s said that Melbourne prides itself on three things: great coffee, great wine and great graffiti – and at Zagame’s House you get all three. This new hangout on Lygon Street – AKA ‘Little Italy’ – sets itself apart from the parade of pizza parlours and trattorias with Zorro-esque ‘Zs’ etched in street-art style on its outside flank, accented with hipster-summoning neon signage. It’s been a hotel in the Zagame family for 16 years, but has just been spruced to the tune of many millions by renowned Melbourne publicans and brothers, Victor and Robert Zagame. Design heavyweights have been wooed, eye-catching artworks have been sourced and two restaurants, championing – you guessed it – great coffee and great wine, have become firm fixtures. So far, so Melbourne…

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A voucher of AU$20 towards food and drink at the Lord Lygon

Facilities

Photos Zagame's House facilities

Need to know

Rooms

88, including 9 suites

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 2pm. There’s free luggage storage on request.

Prices

Double rooms from £103.96 (AU$201), including tax at 10 per cent.

More details

Rates do not usually include breakfast.

At the hotel

A 24-hour gym with weights, kettlebells, treadmills, yoga mats and more; free WiFi. In rooms: flatscreen Samsung TV with free Chromecast movies (or connect via your devices); Marshall Bluetooth speakers; coffee machine; kettle; curated minibar stocked with the likes of Australian whisky Sullivans Cove and wines from the Lord Lygon; a cocktail kit; Smith & Co bath products; Muk hairdryer, straighteners; robes; free Zagame’s House-branded socks; pillow menu; acoustic soundproofing throughout.

Our favourite rooms

Suites give you a bit more space, but all rooms are created equal. And by equal, we mean seriously hi-tech: Muk hairdryers and straighteners use infrared to toast your tresses; charging items if lifted for more than 60 seconds; and bathroom mirrors come with three different light settings to avoid make-up fails.

Packing tips

Running shoes so you can escape to the ’burbs and explore the bushland trails around Yarra Bend Park.

Also

The hotel is wheelchair-accessible with lift access to all rooms, a ramp to the Lord Lygon and designated spaces in the car park.

Pet‐friendly

Canine companions are welcomed with a bag of goodies and a free ‘furry movie of the month’ (yes, really). See more pet-friendly hotels in Melbourne.

Children

All welcome. The entire hotel is accessible for buggies and there are board games and puzzles to borrow, plus in-house movies for children. Travel or foldaway cots and cribs, high chairs and more are also available.

Food and Drink

Photos Zagame's House food and drink

Top Table

Grab a stool by 1851’s window overlooking Lygon Street and watch the Melburnian world go by.

Dress Code

Backwards cap and boardies for breakfast; like a fine wine for dinner.

Hotel restaurant

Sample Melbourne’s buoyant brunch culture without stepping beyond Zagame’s door. Streetside café 1851 Coffee + Kitchen is named after the year the Carlton neighbourhood was founded during the Victorian-era Gold Rush and serves delicious espressos by star roasters Mansfield Coffee Merchant and food from chef Chris Bonello, including breakfast pastries and and classic eggs Benedict. In case you need to up your Melbourne brunch game further, try the açaí-infused granola bowls. From the earthenware crockery to the orb lighting and communal bench tables, the design looks as good as the food. 

On the other side of the ground floor, darker and more decadent Lord Lygon Wine Shop is the perfect date-night spot, whether for lunch and dinner, with full-wall windows that frame buzzy Lygon Street and walls lined with 280 wine bottles. The menu focuses on Italian-style dishes like handmade pastas and a selection of salumi.

Hotel bar

The Lord Lygon restaurant doubles as the hotel’s destination drinking den. As well as hundreds of Aussie wines, there’s single-serve Everleigh Bottling Co cocktails, beard-stroking craft beers and more.

Last orders

1851 Coffee Kitchen is open from 7am to 10am weekdays (till 11am on weekends); Lord Lygon serves evening meals from 4pm until 10pm, except on Sunday and Monday when the restaurant is closed.

Room service

The kitchen never sleeps with the full menu available during restaurant hours (7am-9.30pm), plus toasties filled with truffle cheese and butter chicken.

Location

Photos Zagame's House location
Address
Zagame's House
66 Lygon Street, Carlton
Melbourne
3053
Australia

Zagame’s House sits in the Carlton district on Lygon Street – known as ‘Little Italy’ for its pizzerias and trattorias. It also borders Melbourne’s CBD, not far from vibrant Queen Victoria Market and the Unesco-listed Royal Exhibition Building.

Planes

Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport is 21 kilometres away (a 25-minute drive) from Zagame’s House. You can get the Skybus from the airport to Melbourne City (Southern Cross station) for AU$23.90 one way.

Trains

Melbourne Central train station is a kilometre away from the hotel, meaning it’s an easy hop to explore the city and its suburbs.

Automobiles

There’s a car park by reception; which costs AU$$30 a day, subject to availability.

Worth getting out of bed for

Italian émigrés have flocked to Melbourne’s Lygon Street for decades, with many pizzerias and trattorias having been stalwarts of the street for some 40 years. Of course, you can also tick off Melbourne’s own tricolore of good wine, good coffee and good street art in the hotel and in the Carlton neighbourhood, too. There’s Queen Victoria Market for a start, with hundreds of hole-in-the-wall delis, street-food stalls and hawker-style night markets. Nearby in the CBD, Hosier Lane is the city’s open-air art gallery, where polished bluestone laneways are scrawled with vivid stencils and graffiti murals. That’s not to say there’s a dearth of green spaces, mind. Melbourne’s moniker as the ‘Garden City of Australia’ takes root nearby in Carlton Gardens, a 60-acre stretch of leafy Victorian-era parkland, crowned by the Unesco-listed Royal Exhibition Building and an award-winning children's playground, with sand pits, slides, swings and more. To the north in Yarra, there’s also the Royal Botanical Gardens – a former swamp turned horticultural hideaway of sub-tropical plants and indigenous species, set around a vast ornamental lake. And this being Australia, sand is also close at hand: St Kilda is wide and popular, while Brighton Beach is lined with Crayola-coloured huts.

Local restaurants

One of Lygon Street’s recent success stories is King and Godfree, the revamped 135-year-old Italian grocery – owned by the Valmorbida family – that now includes a wine bar, deli, restaurant, ice-cream parlour and rooftop spot with 360-degree views, where you can stop by for an espresso, a bowl of pasta, a scoop of gelato or even a cookery class. Two other flag-waving trattorias in Little Italy are 40-year-old pizza parlour Il Gambero, with a long list of stone-baked slabs, and Tiamo for thickly coated pastas. The hipster scene is also alive and well on Lygon, with the likes of Heartattack and Vine (named after the Tom Waits album) serving gluten-free eggplant rolls and Venetian-style cicchetti to streetside benches and a beanie-wearing crowd. For a taste of the old country, we loved European-accented Epocha, which uses Aussie ingredients for dishes such as Tasmanian hanger steak with mash in a parkside spot overlooking Carlton Gardens.

Local bars

If you’re in need of a drink, you’ve come to the right place. The Carlton neighbourhood – and Lygon Street especially – is a glass-half-full sort of place, whether that’s sipping wine on the sun-trap terrace at Jimmy Watson’s – a Melbourne institution since 1935 – or admiring the artful matcha lattes at Raffa Place roastery Vertue Coffee (who also do a mean brunch). Two other hangouts had us doing the rounds: don’t miss Carlton Wine Room with its 100-strong wine list, including sommelier-style staff favourites and organic or biodynamic blends to ease morning-after heads; and Atticus Finch – named after the To Kill a Mockingbird character – which doles out craft beers, signature cocktails, cheese plates and charcuterie boards.

Reviews

Photos Zagame's House reviews

Anonymous review

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this sybarite-summoning hotel in Melbourne and unpacked their single-estate wines and Mansfield Coffee Merchant blends, a full account of their Australian city break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Zagame’s House on Lygon Street…

At one time, Melbourne’s Lygon Street had (ahem)… something of a reputation. But the city’s Little Italy enclave is changing fast. Gone are the down-and-out diners, replaced with the likes of King and Godfree – a revamped 135-year-old Italian grocery complex that now includes a wine bar, deli, restaurant, ice-cream parlour and 360-degree rooftop spot. A couple of blocks down is Zagame’s House – another new-but-old address that’s been in the same family for 16 years, but has just had many millions to revamp it as a modern-day destination for Melbourne’s wine-chasing, coffee-loving locals. Join them for brunch over açaí bowls at 1851 Coffee Kitchen or for date-night drinks and dinner at the Lord Lygon while saluting the new-look Lygon Street. The future is written.

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Price per night from $119.33