Inside Milan’s Hottest Culinary Locations

Under a ceiling hand-painted with an interpretation of the parable of Persephone and Demetra is a recent 430-square-foot area in Porta Romana that tells the story—and serves the meals and wine—of Greece subtly, authentically, and with refinement. Joy Herro, who has each an interiors studio and an artwork/ design consultancy, tapped such Greek abilities as Terps (aka Terpsichore Tερψιχόρη ερψιχόρη) for the ceiling, goddess-adorned linen curtain, and ceramic door deal with, and Tino Seubert for the raffia-topped stools lining the Kavalas Greek marble counter, and organized them amid crisp, Santorini-white plaster archways. 

Caruso Nuovo Bistrot by Dimorestudio

Inside the venerable Grand Hotel in Centro Storico, this duomo to Milanese and Neapolitan cooking celebrated its twentieth anniversary with an inside refresh by Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci of Dimorestudio. With their signature restrained maximalism, the designers have tastefully blended notes of Northern Italian aristocracy with bohemian glamour, evident in partitions and benches upholstered in a Prelle jacquard, seven customized chandeliers of silk jersey the colour of Brunello, Murano glass sconces, and, for the out of doors veranda, customized wallpaper and Mathieu Matégot–impressed furnishings, together with Antica rattan chairs by Mario Bonacina and Renzo Mongiardino for Bonacina 1889.

Odachi by Studio Urquiola

Among the myriad highlights of Interior Design Hall of Famer Patricia Urquiola’s conversion of a 1950’s former workplace constructing in Brera into the luxurious, 116-room Casa Brera, a Marriott lodge, is that this lobby-adjacent, 48-seat restaurant serving Japanese-inspired dishes. But her idea is way from cliché Asian: Custom opaline-glass pendant fixtures illuminate the delicate mustard colorway of Dedar’s Perfect Flower banquette upholstery, framed cast-stone architectural fragments by fellow Spanish architect Marià Castelló, and Urquiola’s personal manufacturing items, together with her abstracted-floral Rooms assortment wallpaper for Jannelli&Volpi and her Oru chairs for Andreu World.