Food & Drink

⭐ Aperitivo is a meal, and it is the best value in the city

Between roughly six and nine in the evening you order a drink and food arrives with it — olives and crisps at the modest end, a laid buffet at the generous end, particularly in the Navigli. One drink, one price, and in a good place it is dinner.

The classic order is a Negroni Sbagliato, which was invented in Milan by a barman reaching for the wrong bottle, or a Campari, which is Milanese to begin with.

What Milan actually eats

• Risotto alla milanese — yellow with saffron, finished with butter and parmesan. ⚠️ It is a first course, not a side dish, and a proper one takes twenty minutes.
• Cotoletta alla milanese — veal, breadcrumbed, fried in butter, and ⚠️ properly on the bone. The flat boneless one is an orecchia d'elefante and is a different thing.
• Ossobuco — veal shin with the marrow, usually with the risotto.
• Cassoeula — pork and cabbage, a winter dish, and not a light lunch.
• Panettone — Milanese, Christmas, and the subject of an argument about candied peel that you should not try to settle.

⚠️ Three things on the bill

Coperto is a cover charge per person. It is normal, it is printed on the menu, and it is not a tip. Standing at the bar costs less than sitting down, for coffee and often for everything else — the two prices are posted. And tipping is not expected; rounding up is plenty.

When the city is closed

⚠️ August. Around Ferragosto on the 15th a great many restaurants shut for two or three weeks, often announced only by a sign on the door. ⚠️ And many kitchens close between lunch and dinner — arriving at four expecting a meal does not work here.