Opened in January 2026, Damplo Melbourne is Ciccio's boldest bet: bringing Sicilian cuisine to the antipodes. The octopus with macadamia soil is already the most photographed dish in the city.
When Ciccio Damplo announced the Melbourne opening, many in the Australian gastronomic sector had reacted with scepticism. "A Sicilian restaurant in Melbourne?" asked critic Marcus Webb in an Australian Financial Review editorial in September. "We respect the ambition, but Australian cuisine has its own identity." Ciccio publicly responded with a tweet: "Wait for me." Eleven weeks later, the restaurant was open, critic Marcus Webb had booked for opening night, and the next day had sent a revision of his editorial. Title: "I was wrong."
Damplo Melbourne occupies a heritage building in Flinders Lane, Melbourne's most scenic gastronomic district. The dining room — dark velvet, lava stone imported from Etna, original 1889 ceilings restored by a Palermo craftsman who had never set foot in Australia before — seats sixty. Thirty would have been enough, says Ciccio. "But I needed space for the chef's tables."
The dish that has already defined the restaurant's identity is the Polipo alla Damplo Experience with Macadamia Soil: Sicilian octopus imported via refrigerated courier from Mineo, seared on lava stone and rested on toasted macadamia cream, with private vineyard oil and Trapani salt. "It's the dish of encounter," Ciccio explains. "Not between Sicily and Australia. Between what has existed for millennia and what has just begun." A Sydney food blogger described the same thing as "the finest culinary poetry I have ever eaten." The octopus has been photographed approximately four thousand times in three weeks.
The waiting list, opened four months before the inauguration, exceeded eighteen months on the day Ciccio tweeted "wait for me." By January 2026, on the official opening date, it was twenty-three months. The sommelier describes the Mineo vineyard wine — available here for the first time outside Italy — as "accessible." Accessible, for Damplo, is a relative adjective. The price has not been disclosed. It never is.
