The Best Places to Eat and Drink in Milan

A 15th-century inner courtyard, a summer terrace, and a menu that manages to feature both vitello tonnato and raw seafood without an identity crisis. ZELO is a modern Italian restaurant on one of Milan's quieter luxury streets, where the kitchen leans creative but keeps a few classics around for the table that just wants braised veal. Lunch skews lighter; dinner is when the raw fish comes out. The setting does a lot of the work, and the setting is very good.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

White onyx panels and soft lighting set a mood of deliberate calm at this Japanese fine dining restaurant on Corso Magenta. The kitchen runs on rigorous technique and high-grade ingredients, with an omakase menu that hands control entirely to the chefs. Sitting at the counter while they work is its own argument for the format. The crowd tends toward people who booked weeks ago and mean it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The toilet is famously larger than the bar, which seats four people at a counter and leaves no room for ambiguity about what kind of night you're having. Backdoor 43 is a reservation-only cocktail bar tucked behind another bar on the Navigli, and the bartender on duty is working exclusively for you. Guests pick the music, the pace, and apparently the vibe. Very small, very Milan.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Two rooftop pools and a cocktail bar on the fourth floor of a building in Milan's Porta Garibaldi district set the scene here: the kind of place that decided glamour and a proper dinner weren't mutually exclusive. Brass, marble, and vintage wood fill the interior while the terraces open onto skyscraper views. The kitchen keeps the Italian menu light and seasonal, and the cocktails have become a standard reference point for the city.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The cocktail bar that decided pizza was the obvious food pairing, back when that was a radical idea in Milan. Dry is a lively, sociable spot on Via Solferino where the drinks are serious and the tables are meant to be shared, sometimes with strangers who are perfectly happy to share them. The room runs warm and international, the kind of place where arriving alone rarely stays that way for long.

1. 50 Top Pizza #15 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza 2025 · Best Cocktail List · 50 Top Pizza World Special Awards
3. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin

The dough ferments for 48 hours before it ever sees a oven, which is the whole philosophy at this small, earnest pizza shop in Milan. Three styles are on offer: the classic ruota di carro, a contemporary version, and a pan pizza made with multigrain dough laced with bitter cocoa and coffee. A different vegan option rotates monthly, and the house desserts, including a riff on Key Lime Pie, are quietly serious about their job.

1. 50 Top Pizza #72 · 50 Top Pizza Italy

The dough gets 72 hours to think things over before a pizza here, and you can taste the patience. This is a sit-down pizzeria that takes its toppings seriously, sourcing Culatello di Zibello and Mazara del Vallo prawns for a room that could easily get away with less. Beyond pizza, small plates and a thoughtful Italian-French wine list round things out. Attentive service without the hover.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Crosta spends its days as a bread and pastry shop, then pivots at night into a pizza spot where round pies arrive pre-sliced on the plate. The two-room space feels like a cozy bakery that never quite changed out of its daytime clothes, which suits the informal mood perfectly. Doughs lean light, toppings range from classic to quietly inventive, and the wine list is short enough that you won't agonize over it.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

The open oven anchors the dining room at this Milanese pizzeria, where vintage furnishings give the whole thing an unhurried, neighborhood-parlor feel. The Neapolitan-style pies run on a semi-wholemeal dough, light and properly puffy at the crust, and the toppings lean creative without getting theatrical. Wine gets a serious list; cocktails and draft beer show up in a supporting role. Regulars who know the menu by heart fill the room on weeknights.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A pizzeria on Via Pisacane where the dough is the point, made to sit easy and topped with ingredients chosen for quality rather than novelty. The white calzone with mozzarella and caciocavallo podolico is reason enough to visit, and regulars reportedly take the tomato sauce home in a jar. A short kitchen menu rounds things out, and the Sunday lunch crowd fills a room where you can watch the pizza makers work through the glass.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A Neapolitan-leaning pizzeria that keeps the tradition but lightens it up, using type 1 flour dough that gives the crust presence without overwhelming the toppings. The room is informal and lively, the kind of dinner where no one expects you to dress up or lower your voice. The wine list runs deeper than you'd expect for a pizza spot, and the desserts stick to the classics without apology.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

A soft, elastic dough built around the ingredients of Cilento is the whole point here, a pizza restaurant where the toppings read like a southern Italian pantry, nduja, sun-dried tomatoes, yellow cherry tomatoes, olives, with a stronger-than-usual lean toward vegetarian options. The open kitchen keeps things lively, the staff can actually talk you through the wine and beer list, and the appetizers and desserts are worth the detour. It ranks on 50 Top Pizza World.

1. 50 Top Pizza #68 · 50 Top Pizza World

Maradona watches over every table from the mural, which tells you exactly what kind of place this is before you've sat down. It's a Neapolitan pizza and trattoria spot near Sempione that leans hard into the folklore, fried dough, calzones, and Campania cooking included. On weekends the room tips into dinner-show territory with music and dancing. The pizza dough is notably light and airy, which is the thing people come back for.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

Scissors come with the pizza at this contemporary Milan pizzeria, which is either charming or alarming depending on how attached you are to tradition. The dough gets serious attention for structure and lift, and the menu runs across traditional, signature, and thin-and-crispy styles. Cocktail pairings are on the menu too, which feels very Milan about it. Listed among 50 Top Pizza Italy's Excellent Pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

A bar with no kitchen and a small oven doing the heavy lifting, Bicchierino pulls off something quietly remarkable in the Giambellino neighborhood. The six-seat bar is usually buried in fresh flowers, and the handful of tables fills fast, so book ahead. Natural wines from France, Italy, and Spain anchor the list, with bottles available to take away. The food, given the constraints, reads like a flex: horse tartare, artichokes with preserved lemon, a roast beef sandwich with anchovy mayo.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

A working microwinery inside Milan's city limits that makes its own bottles rather than just selling other people's. The team draws grapes from Oltrepò Pavese, Valpolicella, and the slopes of Etna, then ages them in steel, amphorae, and wood. Charcuterie boards loaded with Lombard cheeses and salumi, plus cicchetti, cover the aperitivo side. Come for a glass; end up staying through dinner.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

A working vegetable garden fills the back of this canal-side restaurant on the quieter southern stretch of the Naviglio Pavese, where Milan loses its edge. The weekly tasting menu follows whatever the garden and season allow, shaped by a chef who grew up moving between France, the U.K., and the U.S. The crowd leans linen-and-natural-wine, which fits the radical-chic mood perfectly and without apparent irony.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

The name on the awning is Japanese, but the spirit is closer to a grandmother's kitchen than a sushi counter. This cozy restaurant near the Duomo was opened to serve the vegetables, curries, and donburi that Milan's many Japanese spots tend to skip entirely. The ka-ree and the potato salad with Japanese mayonnaise are the kind of things you don't realize you've been missing until they're in front of you.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

A chemist who became a baker is either a cautionary tale or a very good idea, and at Le Polveri it's the latter. This small all-day cafe and bread laboratory turns out laminated pastries, focaccia slicked with olive oil, and a short lunch menu built around whatever the team feels like baking that day. The coffee is serious, and the bread, spread thick with whipped butter and house jam, is the kind of thing people walk across neighborhoods for.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

A two-story food hall tucked inside Milan's main train station, with over 30 vendors covering everything from pizza al taglio to Chinese dumplings to Genovese farinata. Davide Longoni's bakery counter is worth seeking out, and Mag, the bar upstairs, is a sibling of Milan's celebrated speakeasy 1930. The kind of place where you can grab a cocktail and a slice of focaccia di Recco and call it a perfectly respectable lunch.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

Paper plates arrive loaded with beef cartilage and horse meat stew at this Porta Venezia osteria, where cucina povera is the whole point. Diego Rossi, the chef behind Trippa, runs a room built around offal, crostini, and natural wine, served from aperitivo hour until midnight. On weekends, the crowd from Via Melzo spills onto the pavement, which tells you something about how the neighborhood feels about the place.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

A family-run osteria near Centrale station where the cassoeula, that old Lombard pork-and-cabbage stew, arrives the same way it did for whoever ran this place before them. Workers fill the tables midweek; families crowd in on weekends for risotto Milanese and anchovies in salsa verde. Save room for the pistachio and hot pepper gelato, which sounds like a dare and isn't. On the way out, peer into the Liberty-style hall next door.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

Sit on the sixth floor of Fondazione Prada's tower building and you have Lucio Fontana on the walls, a triangular terrace for sunset drinks, and bread arriving from the storied Marchesi pasticceria. This is an upscale restaurant serving modern Milanese food and seafood with a Tuscan coastal lean. The crowd dresses accordingly, and the art-world adjacency keeps things from feeling stuffy, which is its own small miracle for a place this polished.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

A few blocks from the Duomo, this casual counter stop does one thing: pizza fritta, the Neapolitan fried-pizza tradition that never made it onto most Milan menus. The dough is long-fermented and cooked to order, arriving as a puffy, glossy pocket stuffed with salami, cicoli, or ricotta and provola di bufala. Grab extra napkins before you find a ledge to stand at, because the instruction to rip off the top and squeeze out the center is not a metaphor.

1. Eater The 37 Best Restaurants in Milan

The black-and-white geometric mosaic walls do something clever with the glassware and smoked ceiling mirrors: the light never quite settles. This is the bar inside the Mandarin Oriental Milan, and it runs from espresso at eight in the morning all the way to a proper late night, organizing itself around aperitivo and the slower hours that follow. The outdoor sofas stay calm well into the evening before the room finds its louder gear.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Perched above a Replay store in Milan's gleaming Piazza Gae Aulenti, the Octavius Bar arrives as a nautical surprise, with boat-like design details in a neighbourhood that reads more glass tower than harbour. The cocktail bar draws the after-work crowd that lives in this part of the city, the kind of people who take their aperitivo seriously. Gae Aulenti is Milan's most self-consciously international square, which makes the whole thing feel pleasingly theatrical.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The name comes from the horticultural term for a cutting, a piece of a plant relocated to take root somewhere new, which tells you something about the ambitions here. Talea is an experimental cocktail bar tucked into a slightly unexpected corner of the Navigli area, with a room that feels deliberately intimate. The drinks lean on kitchen technique as much as bar technique, so what arrives in the glass tends to surprise before it satisfies.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A small cocktail bar with an industrial-meets-contemporary fit-out on a residential stretch between Porta Venezia and Piazzale Loreto, where boutique shops outnumber tourists. The team comes out of five-star luxury hotels, and it shows in the pacing and the polish, though the room itself is relaxed enough that nobody feels underdressed. Milanese regulars mix with the kind of international crowd that follows a good bartender from job to job.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A 15-meter bar counter lined with bamboo shelves stacked floor-to-ceiling with rum pretty much tells you everything. Rita's Tiki Room is a cocktail bar on Milan's canalside strip, serving Tiki classics and house originals alongside Polynesian snacks with a Cantonese edge. The same team behind Rita around the corner runs this one, and the vibe is full commitment: proper accoutrements, no ironic winking at the theme.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The sign is easy to miss, which seems to be part of the point. This cocktail bar in Porta Romana pulls you into a low-lit room of velvet sofas, extravagant mirrors, and sparkling lights that make it feel like the '80s never quite ended. The kind of place where you stop checking your phone without deciding to. A neighborhood worth wandering for its trattorias anyway, so the detour is painless.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Surfboards and antique furniture share wall space at this cocktail bar on the far edge of Milan, and somehow the combination works. The room feels less like a city bar and more like a countryside detour, all mismatched art and skating decks, with a plant enthusiast behind the counter shaking what Italians have always called "misture." Five kilometers from the center, which is exactly far enough to feel like you've escaped something.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide