We are all too used to talking about the chefs while putting the venue on the back burner. Waby's contemporary Asian cuisine overturns that general truth.
Waby Milano
The restaurant
Four Chinese guys, all speaking Italian among themselves. Milan is indeed home to the new generation, the true hybrids. Not that you don’t find it elsewhere in Italy; however, Milan is, by its nature and recent transformation, the place of great opportunities. 
We are at Waby's, a new international Asian cuisine restaurant that opened a few months ago without much fanfare. The name "international Asian cuisine" is just an attempt to categorize a restaurant offering far beyond sushi. However, many Milanese will still choose it because, among the different preparations on the menu, it provides that as well. Simplification is always around the corner. Waby has another peculiarity that makes it a separate category: you don’t know the chef's name or who runs the kitchen. It is purposely kept hidden.
Almost always, restaurants of a certain level are chef-centric; that is, the name of the restaurant is almost always joined by the name of the chef, or the name of the restaurant is/contains the name of the chef. However, among enthusiasts, if you pay attention or do some soul-searching, they often say let's go by the "chef's name" and not let's go by "restaurant name."
Waby is more of a restaurant as a business, owned by Matteo Zhu, born in Biella in 1996, the son of a family originally from Zhejiang, devoted partly to the import-export business and partly to the restaurant business. Matteo is like the guys at the table just above, a young man of Chinese descent, born and raised in Italy. When he was two years old, his family moved to Milan, and as he grew up, he increasingly absorbed its often frenetic, sometimes dead-end entrepreneurial spirit. Matteo did not want to forget his origins, so he went to China for two years to study the language. He returned to Italy and gained experience in his family's establishments. The latency of his project grew far beyond the responsibility and desire to help his parents. As he tells us himself, in maturing what is now before everyone's eyes just below Gae Aulenti Square, he traveled extensively to discover all the possible facets of the Asian restaurant he had in mind.
The imperfect beauty of wabi-sabism described in the press release stands out in Matteo’s low profile, yet his ideas are so clear and concise that the fire in his eyes blows much more on the road to perfection and the pursuit of it. The restaurant is a gem, resulting from an exhausting construction site in which the main room is a blinding balance between refinement and comfort. Likewise, the kitchen, despite being elevated, is hidden at first glance. However, hospitality does not denigrate those who want to sit in front of the counter and eat sushi at the bar.
We sat at one of the tables closest to the windows that face two streets at an angle of Piazza Gae Aulenti, a district designed to remove all doubt about Milan's intentions for internationality. Where else could Waby open? In city life, some of you will think. However, you should know that Waby is open seven days a week and is much more suited to a high-spending-melting pot-nightlife-moving district like Porta Nuova/Nuove Varesine, as opposed to a residential-only-high &fast-spending-commercial district. Don't you guys get it right? No one is perfect, not even when we try to get inside the entrepreneur's mind.
When we ask Matteo if there is an exchange of views and comparisons between entrepreneurs doing Asian and international catering in Milan, he lets slip the name of the Liu family, now an institution in Milan. The three Liu brothers are responsible for the galaxy of Iyo, Gong, and Ba restaurants. Marco Liu is the youngest and the only one to have been born in Italy; with him, Matteo has forged a special bond, and by necessity, he has found himself around the table talking about his ideas. Naturally, the references are high-sounding, namely Zuma and Nobu. However, Matteo does not hide from us that Waby Milano is only the first. He does not say we will see how it goes; he says it with conviction, extreme conviction.
Dishes
Despite not knowing the cook's name, we are so professionally warped that we ask if we can at least shake the hand of one of the people that prepared our meal. Indeed, we are faced with cooks of the highest caliber executing dishes designed to be flawless.
The ingredients are uncompromising in quality, personally researched and verified by Matteo. However, before we dwell on some of the dishes that turned the light bulb on our palate, there are two factors worth noting: they underlie the entire taste experience you can have at Waby's, or at least a large part. First, stratospheric rice – a Japanese variety called Tamanishiki – that \\has a round, oval shape. It stays firm until you put it in your mouth, then it crumbles without even the slightest afterthought of stickiness. You don't know the level that, thanks to this rice, the Nigiri Selection reaches, certainly at the highest levels of Milanese offerings, especially in the squid, shiso and lime version, of which we would have eaten a bento box. The second factor is the freshness that characterizes almost all the dishes, raw and cooked, due to the nearly constant use of jalapeno and shichimi togarashi, which means "seven-flavored chili," a blend of seven spices (Sichuan pepper, red chili, ground ginger, nori seaweed, toasted black and white sesame seeds and orange peel). In addition, at Waby's, the wasabi is fresh and grated directly from the root.
At least for our course, the last general observation concerns the drink pairing. Matteo led us through the meanderings of sake, which would deserve a more in-depth study. We tasted five different varieties, including one sparkling and one with yuzu. In the end, moved by nostalgia, we had to order a glass of white. Next, he served us Pantaleone's Onirocep 2020. What a strange coincidence: in issue zero of Verticale magazine-which we have already mentioned in Reporter Gourmet- we read with curiosity about the very vintages of this pecorino. Finding it in a sparkling modern dining room like Waby took us by surprise. After tasting it, we must admit that Matteo's consistency reaches unexpected levels. The wine creeps into the detailed backstory of freshness and pungent taste given by the spices. Aromas of unripe fruit, green grass and hay fill the nostrils. It is almost spicy in the mouth, dilating the palate with its freshness and the tensive acidity it releases.
Of the Nigiri Selection we have already mentioned. Among the uramaki, we tasted the Hamachi Jalapeno with greater amberjack, avocado and jalapeno. In the Creations chapter, there is a special mention of Hotate Iberico, a millefeuille of scallops, jamon iberico, jalapeno, cilantro, miso sauce and yuzu. The texture of the layered scallop and the bold seasoning make it one of the best tastings.
Among the hot items, I applaud the Robata charcoal grill cooking, of which we devoured a sumptuous pair of Wagyu and jalapeno skewers with wafu dressing, a Japanese sauce made with spring onion, rice vinegar, and soy. The dish that did not convince us was one of the Kobachi, which in Japanese means the chef's appetizer or tasting. In the Black Cod Roll, the presence of the prized Alaskan black cod was diminished due to an excessive amount of kataifi dough. It would have made everything too perfect, wouldn’t it of?
Address
WABY Restaurant
Via Carlo de Cristoforis 2 – 20124 Milano
Tel. 02 8341 2987 - 3516788099
Website
