Two girls, a kitchen and a love story. Among the courtyards of Old Milan, to feel everywhere in the world
The story of Al Cortile is a story of love and passion. Passion for cooking and love between the two chefs, Libera Massa and Barbara Panetti, partners in life and work. At their side a staff of women only. "Not by choice, it's a finding," explains Libera. «But not a coincidence. This is hard work that we like to do with a smile and in a peaceful atmosphere, having fun. " And maybe women can do this much better …
Among the old Milan-style railing houses typical of Porta Ticinese, among clothes hung out to dry, climbing jasmine and lofts of architecture studios, memories of bad stories and nights of scighera, stands Al Cortile, a restaurant that fully embodies the double soul of the city. Hidden from prying eyes is a well-known address among the people of fashion and design who have kept it as a small secret for their parties. But word of mouth is difficult to stop in Milan, and Al Cortile has made its way even among lovers of good food.
You eat at the pass
In the courtyard because today as in the past, everyday life has always been consumed in the space enclosed between the balconies and the Milanese sociality has always been consumed. Neighbors, students and workers meet with restaurant guests sitting outside, in the shade of an old red brick chimney, or inside, under a high ceiling of exposed beams and right in the premises of those who were the foundries of Milan. Born as locals of the Food Genius Academy cooking school, Barbara and Libera met teaching the kids, cooking together in what would then be their restaurant and their life project together. Growing up to become an independent restaurant, Al Cortile does not betray its vocation: students taking their first steps in the kitchen and in the dining room, alongside the staff, and for the more curious, not a chef's table in the kitchen but the possibility of eating directly to the pass, in the company of the chefs who manage the service and the preparation of the dishes.
A new Milanese cuisine
The cuisine you eat at Al Cortile is the new Milanese cuisine: a cultural melting pot, a mirror of today's Milan and its citizens. The tradition and recipes of grandmothers are not re-proposed in didactic or revisited versions, but are simply a cultural background like others from which to develop ideas and flavors, together with travel, personal stories and ingredients; exotic or zero km. The goal: to create a new memory. On the menu, a whole fried sea bass, served with sweet and sour sauce and coriander, which looks to the East, and at the same time comforting red kuru pumpkin and robiola agnolotti, 36-month parmesan fondue, brown pumpkin and hazelnut base. Ingredients become the protagonists of whole dishes, such as Brussels sprouts, crispy and served with a hazelnut cream and a veil of dark Colonnata lard. Joking with the eighties, the prawn cocktail becomes a puffed sesame and prawn cracker on which to lay raw Mazara red prawns and seasoned with a bisque-based sauce. The panna cotta is the real one, the one without jelly, creamy and baked, never eaten today, but served with a granola with cereals, bergamot, clementines and buttermilk ice cream. The classic tiramisu is revisited by Barbara in an elegant single portion, covered with burnt marshmallow.
No vegetable garden, you shop
Here the garden is not cultivated, the gardens of Milan have always been those of the South Milan Agricultural Park and the surrounding countryside. Milan, however, is also the first city in Italy to have had supermarkets and to have invented large retailers. At the courtyard, "shopping" is done thanks to a widespread network of trusted and carefully selected producers. Sprouts and aromatic plants come from the vertical farm of the nearby start-up, Agricola Moderna, while the white geese arrive from the Cascina Madonnina, just outside Milan, where a group of women only raises them freely in the WWF natural oasis. Guido Botticelli, passionate "hunter" of small producers and biodiversity, makes his contribution by providing Slow Food presidia such as the onions of Giarratana and the hump thistles of Nizza Monferrato. Bread is made by the baker, it is bought every morning exclusively in the city ovens inside the ring road, those of the friends of Crosta and Davide Longoni.