Tag: Milan

The historic taverns outside Milan that have also resisted the lockdown – Italian Cuisine

A trip to the taverns with a long story to tell, even after the Covid-19 emergency

Let's start with a premise: how many times have you asked a friend who lives in Milan for advice on a typical Milanese trattoria in the city center?
And how many times have you been told that in addition to the most famous city restaurants, the best places to jump into the past are just outside the city?
This is because the Lombard capital is surrounded by the countryside, full of ancient farmhouses from which the typical Milanese cuisine we know is born, to live an authentic gastronomic experience.
Over the years many of these farmhouses have also been converted into farmhouses and inns.

Here are two ancient taverns selected with a long and fascinating story to tell.

Antica Osteria il Ronchettino – Gratosoglio

Just outside the center, in the shadow of the skyscrapers of the Milanese suburbs, this ancient 17th-century farmhouse has survived over the years, now renovated with great taste.
A small and pretty internal courtyard acts as a link between several rooms, each of which with a few tables, well spaced from each other, for an intimate atmosphere where you can fully appreciate the great attention to every detail, both in the furnishings and in the dishes served, inspired by the family recipes of the owner Patrizia Meazza today helped by her sons Alessia and Francesco Angelillo.

The first evidence of this inn dates back to 1929, but the name Ronchettino seems to have taken inspiration from the broken base, also called the "ronchetto". Here, in fact, there was already a post station in the seventeenth century where horses were shoeed and legends narrate that even Napoleon stopped here to stay overnight in the early nineteenth century. Subsequently this building became an oven, then a butcher shop and finally a restaurant with an adjoining bowling club, later taken over in the nineties by the Angiolillo family who made it a place of catering and entertainment with music and cabaret shows.

Today the chef Simone Zanon in his menu, written strictly by hand in old school notebooks, offers recipes historically faithful to the Lombard tradition such as the risotto with veal ossobuco and gremolada sauce or the Milanese cutlet both in the cooked elephant ear version in clarified or Imperial butter prepared with a cut that satisfies at least 4 people.

In addition to these proposals, which remain on the menu all year round, seasonally other dishes also alternate, the so-called "outside Milan", perfect for those who want to be amazed. Like spaghetti with grapefruit and bottarga sour butter and artichoke risotto with roasted eel.

Noteworthy is the extensive wine list that prefers Lombard and Piedmontese terroirs, with which you can play letting yourself be guided blindly by Diego Laguzzi, sommelier who enchants for his great experience.

During the summer there is also the possibility of staying outside, in the delightful internal courtyard.

Osteria del Ponte – Trezzano sul Naviglio

On the banks of the Naviglio Grande, which flows from the urban center and continues its course in the Milanese countryside, a building rich in history has survived to the present day. It is said that it was founded in 1380 as a castle and later in the sixteenth century it was converted into a monastery. Some historical texts attest that Ludovico Il Moro passed through here in 1480, who often and willingly would have stayed overnight, while reaching his hunting lands in the Pavese countryside.

Today the former castle has been renovated and set up with a more modern taste, between Provencal and Lo shabby chic, without forgetting its history. The large central courtyard is an outdoor area that is very enjoyable in this summer and for social distancing.

The Milanese cuisine here could only be offered in its purest version. We find the mondeghili (the typical meatballs), the mixed Milanese fried, the Milanese risotto with the wicker and the inevitable elephant ear cutlet.

On some special occasions the tavern can also be reached by boat, which navigates the Naviglio Grande starting from the Darsena in Milan. An alternative and certainly fascinating way for an experience that takes you back in time.

It can be said that today another piece of history has been added to these places that will continue to live here and in all the restaurants that have survived this period of difficulty.

Forno Tondo, on the island of Milan there is a new neighborhood bakery – Italian Cuisine

Forno Tondo is the new bakery in the Isola district in Milan. To open it Silvia Cancellieri, young promise of bread-making

A single showcase, discreet as the character of its owner. The street is also slightly secluded, but along the perimeter of one of the most dynamic areas of Milan. Silvia Cancellieri, after various explorations, eventually chose theIsland to open his Round oven. Born in February with the idea of becoming a neighborhood bakery, it is already a meeting point for the inhabitants of the area. The name chose it because «it is short, easy to remember. But also because it reports to loaf shape and expresses well the sense of cyclicity: of bread, of living processes and, as a woman, I also say of the moon. In fact, as a personal reading, I see in the logo. I like the overall image of femininity .

At school of bread from Verdickt, Longoni and Grazioli

She says it with a touch of pride, she who, as a "stubborn" young woman, chose a profession often still tied to the singular masculine (or at most plural). After a respectable cursus honorum, in which names like Verdickt, Longoni is Grazioli, Silvia managed to land with her small shop on the island: a single, clear environment, with a note of color given by some Ustica tiles, a large wooden table, on which Ligurian focaccias and some Sicilian inspirations rest – in honor of their roots -, a shelf that frames the shapes of bread e a large window with a window, behind which the decisive or delicate movements of his hands on the doughs can be glimpsed.

Forno Tondo, new neighborhood bakery

When Silvia first raised the damper it was the end of February. After a week Milan would have entered a tunnel from which the city, people and the whole world came out decidedly changed. Months in which the bread has become symbol of life and resilience. And the baker's craft he stripped himself of worldliness to return to the essentials. In these three months, his "neighborhood bakery" has become reality without his realizing it.

Milan, on the island the new neighborhood bakery is Tondo and speaks female.

An essential baking idea

"Now the challenge will be to maintain relationships with all those people who found a point of reference in my shop in those strange days." But it won't be difficult, because Silvia knows how to listen and above all because she likes to tell her bread, which is as essential as the idea behind it: "Baking means bringing together the whole chain in something that takes shape in your hands, it means playing with transformation".

Silvia's bread: round, large format, with mother yeast

From this "simplicity", "Which is not the starting point but the arrival point", as stated in the quote that welcomes its clients, was born Silvia's bread: round. Large format. With sourdough is organic stone-ground flours. A honeycomb leavened product, slightly moist and with an imperceptible acidic note. There are the daily classics: the Tonda, a 3 kg form of type 2 soft wheat flour; there is the 1 kg durum wheat semolina bread and the mixed seed bread, also 1 kg. Then, on rotation, there is always a different integral on the shelf, "to try flavors, aromas and textures. This is bringing many customers closer to the idea of wholemeal bread, because everyone finds their own. "

Every day an integral in rotation

The Tuesday is the day of the rye (Piedmont), the Wednesday of the Margherito, a variety of durum wheat (Sicily), the Thursday is located on spelled (Umbria), the Friday it's up to Sicilian evolutionary blend of soft grains, which has a slight licorice aftertaste. And to finish the Saturday there is what Silvia calls the Moro di Sicilia, «A mixture of mainly hard grains, which contains tumminie very dark which give a particular color and crazy aromas . More there is also a special bread every day, enriched with fruit or other ingredients. "That is no longer the daily bread, but a whim."

Bread is certainty, but also research

The choice to have three "classics" and of rotate the others it was dictated by the awareness that bread must be certainty. Customers must be offered a good, stable and pleasing product. To do this you need to know the flours, perhaps use less aromatic and easier to process. But bread is also research. Especially for a girl who graduated in Gastronomic Sciences before being hit by the so-called "bread disease". In the three years of studies he learned a enhance the complexity of the food, to recognize quality not only in the artisan gesture of those who make transformation, but also in the agricultural act of those who cultivate the raw material: "For me, giving value to the supply chains is not only a gastronomic priority, but also an ethical one".

Silvia receives the "Cultivate and Care" award

For all these reasons, Silvia is among the winners of Cultivating and Preserving, a appointment, scheduled until June 27, created by the Ceretto Wineries and the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo to enhance the good practices of the area. Now in its third edition, the theme of this year is bread, a symbol par excellence of the peasant tradition and today also of an ability to make innovation that focuses on the territoriality and sustainability of the entire agri-food chain.

At the restaurant, but in the private room. Here's where to go, between Milan and Sicily – Italian Cuisine

This fall will be the trend: the private room, in the starred restaurant or trattoria, for maximum privacy (and social distancing). To eat pizza, sushi or even the cutlet that Shakira …

A restaurant with a private room, in Milan, in the hinterland or in any other Italian city, it is an address to be treasured. A separate room is perfect for a party, a dinner with friends, to gather a work team (or, as often happens, because after a certain age you prefer to be quiet, away from the confusion). The private room is, therefore, highly sought after, but not so easy to find: it is often too small, too large or simply not quite secluded. Individuals, communication agencies, events, companies … But in 2020 another type of customer is added.

If the lockdown ended with the arrival of summer and everyone poured into the street, in the squares, in the garden to eat outdoors, as soon as the suffocating heat arrives or in the autumn the private room will be the perfect choice to get together. Because the restaurant is fine, but avoiding being too close to other customers.

Here then is a rundown of restaurants with a private room: from Milan to Sicily, passing through Rome, Naples, a castle in the Langhe and a place that in those rooms has seen passing from George Michael to Shakira; also famous for its Milanese cutlet.

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