You want the cakes? You can’t handle the cakes.

Jack Nicholson might well have been channelling a visit to Brunetti when delivering his finest performance in A Few Good Men. What, you think he’s never bettered The Shining? Or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

It’s hosting these discussions over coffee and cake that Brunetti has excelled in for decades at its original Carlton home next to the cinema. But here in Flinders Lane those famed pastries are on back-lit display and form an impressive entry into this space, which opened late last year.

There’s nothing shy about this beautiful Techne-designed behemoth that feels straight out of bustling Roma Termini train station. But rather than businessmen knocking back caffe corretto before getting the Frecciarossa back to Naples, it’s a young-through-old cross section of Melbourne coming for not only the cakes and pastries, but a full menu of pizza, pasta and panini.

Serving a restaurant that’s busy from early AM until late at night is no mean feat, but the food veers from great – excellent pizza slices from the wood oven impressively suspended from the roof – to patchy. A gluggy carbonara over-seasoned with pepper doesn’t pass muster; neither does a bland, cool polpette served in a panino. An Aperol spritz, though, is perfect.

The slightly chaotic, and annoying, system – order and pay at the counter, and though food comes to your table, you pick up your own drinks at the bar – makes sense only if you think like an Italian. Which is a whole lot easier to do with that pizza in pala in hand – focaccia-like dough that’s deliciously oily, crunchy and oozy with stracciatella cheese, topped with tomatoes and basil.

There’s good gelato, of course, and excellent coffee – a house blend created by Lavazza roasted on site. And those cakes? They remain as good as it gets.