Three places to discover true, authentic traditional cuisine in one of the most "global" cities of Italy. Follow our recommendations and you will fall hopelessly in love with historic Milanese dishes.
The "Magnificent 3" of typical Milanese cuisine
“Milano, Milano è una grande città...si mangia, si beve, l’amore si fa!” (Milan, Milan is a great city...you eat, you drink, you make love!) An old rhyme that still holds true about the metropolis of Milan today: dynamic and modern par excellence, the "capital of Italian making," never equal to itself and creative.
@Ratanà
The development of the city's "global" dimension found fertile ground after Expo 2015, the universal exposition held in Milan eight years ago based on the theme "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life." We speak of "global" understood as a multiplier of cultural diversity, the basis for the birth of a new Milanese identity: multi-ethnic, enlivened by multiple currents of thought, firmly on its own legs. But the term "global" also carries with it the risk of a standardizing flattening that nullifies all that is "local" instead: peculiarities, distinctive notes that make up a place: in short, tradition. And so, in a city as extraordinary as Milan, the question arises: where is ... the ordinary? Where can one taste the real, authentic, Milanese cuisine?
Cesare Battisti
1.Ratanà
A Milanese for generations, Cesare Battisti started Ratanà in 2009, in a historic building from the early 20th century that stands out among the new buildings in the Garibaldi Porta Nuova district. His is a cuisine that stems from the need to make Milanese tradition contemporary, through a sustainable gastronomic culture and the enhancement of local excellence. Everything revolves around great attention to raw materials, selected in collaboration with farmers, small farmers, fishermen and artisans.
At Ratanà you taste Milan without a distinction between past and present: historical recipes are updated by the creativity of Cesare and his team, yet never distorted. Easily recognizable and clean flavors are the basis of simple dishes, which are yet (pleasantly) surprising in taste: they are result of a critical interpretation of tradition, which is always linked to Milanese and Lombard gastronomic memory. Cesare Battisti affirms that "if Milan were a dish, it would have rice of all colors inside;" his perfect risottos interpret and give voice to the entire city. Among all risottos, saffron risotto has entered the genetic code of the Milanese people for more than four hundred years, becoming a true symbol of the Milanese identity.
Here at Ratanà they offer it in two versions: served as a single dish with whole ossobuco and its sauce, or alla vecchia Milano (traditional-Milan style) with marrow, jus, parsley gremolata, and (the secret touch) a tad of anchovies as they used to do in the past. Among the Milanese specialties on the menu, it is impossible not to mention the famous mondeghili, fried beef patties en papillote served for aperitivo, and the iconic costoletta (breaded cutlet). Regarding the latter, you should that the real Milanese specialty is not "cottoletta" (which has been around only since the 1970s) but the "costoletta," served bone-in.
In the past it was called costuleta col manueber (“cutlet with the handle”). Cesare’s costoletta is only cooked to order by phoning the restaurant 48 hours in advance, because “properly making a costoletta takes time," and his is a true masterpiece: hand-pounded and still pink in the middle, almost 5 cm thick (halfway between the thin "elephant ear" one and the tall one), and it is made with Piedmontese suckling veal (i.e., fed only on mother's milk) meat, and breaded with sourdough bread. It is browned in clarified alpage butter to which sage is added, infusing it with a pleasant homey aroma.
Address: Via Gaetano de Castillia 28, 20124, Milan
Contact: +39 02 87128 855 - info@ratana.it
Opening hours: open daily lunch and dinner. Lunch 12:00-14:30, Dinner 19:00-23:00
Website: https://www.ratana.it/
2.Trattoria del Nuovo Macello
Born with this name back in 1927, in front of a newly opened Milanese slaughterhouse. Since 1957, it has been managed by the Traversone family, which still to this day - with Giovanni Traversone in the kitchen - delights us with dishes faithful to the flavors of tradition. The first customers were workers from the markets and the slaughterhouse, who in those days would bring their own meat and offal to be cooked by nonna Maddalena, the first cook. Taking a seat in a trattoria today means entering an environment in which the image of an old Italian-style dining room survives, with white tablecloths pervaded by a warm and reassuring atmosphere.
The restaurant has always been based on simple and genuine home cooking, faithful to the tastes of the Milanese tradition and where you can rediscover the pleasure of eating well. It all begins with the C'era un volta (“Once Upon A Time”) appetizer, which features a tasting of eight typically Lombard delicacies including mondeghili with sweet and sour tomato sauce, roast veal, nervetti (meat, cartilage, and tendons from beef shank that are cooked on the bone) and tongue with salsa verde, liver pâté and marinated trout in carpione.
It would then be a real sin for gluttony to abstain from the delicious yellow risotto with saffron stigmas, superior butter and long-aged Lodigiano Riserva. New to the menu, however, is lasagna alla milanese, a traditional dish that dates back to the 1800s. With technical vigor, Giovanni updates this vegetarian recipe in a new version made with Jerusalem artichoke béchamel, celeriac ragout, and a grating of black truffle out of the oven. All accompanied by a vegetable reduction reminiscent of roast.
The restaurant's most famous dish, however, is the costoletta alla milanese: the edible example of a cuisine that has found the key to always updating itself, but knowledgeably. The long maturation of the veal results in a very tender chop, which does not lose liquid in cooking but retains all its juices. It is cooked and browned in clarified butter, and once served it dominates the table from the height of its 3 cm thickness.
Another Milanese specialty that deserves mention is pan-roasted sweetbread served with a Jerusalem artichoke cream, parsley green sauce, anchovies and lemon. Then the farmhouse duck with orange sauce, vermouth, and fennel and its leg stuffed with onions and macaroons. Also, busecca (Lombard tripe) prepared plain and accompanied by a dill oil and saffron sauce.
Address: Via Cesare Lombroso 20, 20137, Milan
Contact: 02 5990 2122 - 348 5890 413 - info@trattoriadelnuovomacello.it
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, lunch 12:30-15:00 dinner 20:00-22:00, Saturday open only for dinner. Closed on Sundays.
Website: https://www.trattoriadelnuovomacello.it/
3.Osteria Serafina
Christened in 2020, Osteria Serafina is the youngest of the three locations. We've already talked about a restaurant, an old trattoria, and now we will tell you about an osteria that is anything but usual: an enveloping time capsule where everything has stopped.
Thanks to a painstaking restyling of the quarters, Serafina's team has managed to bring back the 1970s-style and timeless allure of a unique establishment. The open kitchen dominates the main dining room, and to add further charm to the rooms, they have employed retro mirrors, antique paintings, colorful bottles, lampshades, mason jars, and flowered curtains. An amicable balance also reigns among the dishes on the menu, which draw from Italian and Milanese traditions, becoming a meeting place of clean, direct flavors. Recipes of the heart, of belonging, which are shared as confidences and intricacies between old friends.
Risotto alla Milanese, like the other dishes on the menu, is characterized by the constant search for the highest quality ingredients. They use Carnaroli rice from the Azienda Agricola Salera in the Ticino reserve, saffron from Sardinia, and butter derived only from 100% Italian milk: raw materials that form the basis of a silky, lively risotto served with saffron pistils and veal marrow. Chef Giovanni Russo reveals that "the secret of this dish is hidden in the mantecatura (the final whisking of risotto, after cooking, with fat, and if desired, grated cheese) of the rice," which is done using a cultured butter made in-house (thus replacing the touch of white vinegar that was used in the past to tone down the fat). The butter is centrifuged in a stand mixer along with vinegar-wilted onions, which are removed after imparting their sour note to the butter.
In addition to Milanese and Marrow, a Milanese dish always on the menu is Milanese costoletta with sautéed potatoes. The meat is tender, intensely flavored, and comes from one of the best Italian veals. The crunchy batter of the meat is made using white eggs from Trentino, Apulian bread from Altamura, and panko breadcrumbs of Japanese origin. The breaded costoletta is then cooked in clarified butter, which is ideal for high-heat cooking and gives the costoletta its characteristic golden color.
Address: Via Luigi Sacco, 9, 20149, Milano
Contact: +39 389 929 9450 - osteriaserafina@mipgroup.it
Opening hours: Monday to Friday dinner only 7:30-00:00 p.m., weekends also lunch 12:30-3:00 p.m.
Website: https://www.osteriaserafina.com/
