Call Indulge
03 4021 2062
03 4021 2062
Mildura’s original Paninoteca — celebrating Italian food, family, and community
Some places you stumble into once and never stop thinking about. The Italian Mildura is one of those places.
We’ve partnered with Sandra, Brad and their team because they represent exactly what we love about this town — real food, made by hand, by people who genuinely care. It’s not a chain. It’s not a concept. It’s a Mildura original, built from a home kitchen and years of feeding people well.
The Italian keeps it simple — and that’s exactly the point. The menu is built around what they do best: panino stuffed with quality local ingredients, handmade cannoli that the Herald Sun named the best in Australia, strong coffee, and a spread of antipasti that could easily turn lunch into an afternoon.
There’s also a Banchetto — a six-course banquet experience for those who want to sit down and really eat — plus occasional dinners, aperitivo afternoons, and a full liquor licence. Whatever you’re after, it’s the kind of place that makes you wish you lived around the corner.
There’s no central kitchen, no frozen deliveries. Everything at The Italian is made on-site, by hand, using recipes rooted in Southern Italian tradition — specifically the Calabrian food culture that Sandra Imbesi grew up with and that has shaped so much of Mildura’s character.
The produce is local. The cannoli shells are freshly fried. The bread is slow-fermented. It’s the kind of detail that doesn’t show up on a menu but you taste in every bite.
Sandra Imbesi didn’t set out to open a restaurant. She started baking sourdough at home, delivering bread to a few clients, then took a stall at the Red Cliffs market with her best friend and her mum. Cannoli, arancini, fried bread with meatballs — people kept coming back.
One thing led to another. A shop on Etiwanda Avenue. A stint alongside veteran chef Brad Fyfe. Then in 2023, a permanent home on Langtree Avenue as The Italian Paninoteca | Cannoli | Bar — a proper lunch bar, on its own terms, doing what it’s always done.
It’s a Mildura story as much as an Italian one.
