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Selected by Monaco Voice, this guide highlights some of the best restaurants to dine in Milan and its surroundings. From well-known addresses to more discreet spots, each place offers a quality experience worth discovering.
Contraste: A Play of Illusion and Taste
In Milan, a city known for its refined culinary codes, Contraste breaks away from convention, embracing a more expressive and narrative-driven approach to dining. Hidden behind a façade near Naviglio Pavese, this Michelin-starred address invites guests into a world where nothing is quite what it seems—where gastronomy unfolds as a living, shifting experience rather than a fixed set of rules.
The setting immediately establishes this philosophy. Located within a 19th-century residence, the restaurant has recently undergone a thoughtful transformation. Original frescoes, stuccoes, and a grand fireplace remain intact, yet they now coexist with bold colours, velvet curtains, and a sequence of rooms inspired by the four elements—air, earth, fire, and water. The effect is cinematic. Moving through the space feels less like entering a dining room and more like progressing through acts of a performance, where each environment subtly alters perception. That same sense of theatre carries into the kitchen.
©Serena Eller
Founded in 2015 by Uruguayan chef Matias Perdomo, alongside Argentinian Simon Press and Italian Thomas Piras, Contraste was conceived as a place of total creative freedom. Perdomo, who built his career in Milan after training abroad, sought to move beyond the rigidity of fine dining and instead create a space where tradition and innovation could coexist without hierarchy. The result is a cuisine that evolves constantly, shaped by dialogue—between cultures, between techniques, and crucially, between the kitchen and the guest.
There is no à la carte. Instead, diners choose between two tasting paths built around the idea of reflection. Riflesso looks toward the past, revisiting Italian classics through a contemporary lens, while Riflessioni projects forward, exploring combinations that feel unfamiliar, sometimes disorienting, yet always intentional. Both menus unfold across a sequence of around twenty bites, forming a narrative rather than a simple progression of courses.
The more experimental route reveals the restaurant’s identity most clearly. A dish of mussels with cheese and pepper reinterprets a familiar flavour structure, shifting its balance and texture. A Bolognese donut plays with memory, transforming one of Italy’s most recognisable recipes into something almost playful. A ceviche of grouper and strawberry blurs boundaries between sea and fruit, freshness and sweetness. Each plate invites a moment of hesitation, followed by recognition—then surprise.
This is the essence of Contraste: not opposition, but harmony through tension. Ingredients are sourced across Europe, from Italy, France, Spain and beyond, yet always handled with a sense of purpose. The menu evolves gradually, allowing ideas to return in new forms—such as a glazed onion that oscillates between savoury and sweet, or porcini mushrooms paired with fruit in a way that feels unexpectedly natural.
Service reinforces this sense of movement. There is precision, but no rigidity. The dining room operates like a stage, where guests are not passive observers but active participants. Interaction is encouraged, curiosity rewarded. The experience becomes collective—less about performance for an audience, and more about shared discovery.
Over the years, this approach has attracted a remarkably diverse clientele, from seasoned fine dining enthusiasts to those encountering a Michelin-starred restaurant for the first time. What unites them is not expectation, but curiosity—a willingness to engage with something unfamiliar. At its core, Contraste is not simply a restaurant. It is an evolving idea of hospitality—one that challenges, surprises, and ultimately lingers. Not as a memory of dishes, but as a feeling: that for a few hours, the rules were suspended, and something new took their place.
Address: Via Giuseppe Meda, 2, 20136 Milano MI, Italy
Phone: +39 02 4953 6597
Olio Restaurant: Haute Cuisine, Art and Vintage Cars
Just beyond Milan, in the quiet town of Origgio, Olio unfolds in a setting that feels anything but conventional. Housed within The Box—a vast, evolving space where vintage cars, contemporary art and design coexist—the restaurant reflects a vision that goes far beyond gastronomy. It is a place where aesthetics, movement and flavour intersect, creating an atmosphere that is both unexpected and deeply considered.
At the centre of this project is chef Andrea Marinelli, whose cuisine is rooted in the Mediterranean yet shaped by a broader, more contemporary sensibility. His time in Northern Europe, particularly in Copenhagen, left a lasting imprint—visible not in imitation, but in a certain restraint, a clarity of flavour, and a respect for ingredients that defines every plate.
Fish is the undisputed protagonist. Each day, the kitchen works with a carefully selected network of suppliers ensuring traceability, seasonality and quality across every species, from the most sought-after to the quietly exceptional. Sustainability is not treated as a concept but as a practice, guiding both sourcing and execution.
Yet Olio is not solely about the sea. The cuisine exists in constant dialogue with the surrounding landscape—gardens, olive trees, and cultivated spaces that provide herbs, fruits and vegetables following their natural rhythm. This connection to the land softens and balances the marine focus, creating dishes that feel grounded rather than technical.
The menu evolves three times a year, not dramatically, but with subtle shifts that reflect the season and the chef’s ongoing exploration. Certain creations, however, have become defining signatures. The risotto with basil pesto, tomato, and a combination of raw and cooked seafood stands out for its depth and precision—a dish where richness is carefully controlled, never overwhelming. A delicate chawanmushi introduces a more unexpected reference, while the monkfish Wellington reinterprets a classic format with elegance and restraint. There is a sense of discipline throughout the kitchen’s approach. Flavours are clear, compositions measured, and creativity never forced. The result is a cuisine that feels confident without being declarative—one that invites attention rather than demands it.
Equally notable is the restaurant’s commitment to inclusivity. Every dish can be adapted to gluten-free and lactose-free requirements without compromising structure or flavour, supported by a dedicated kitchen space. It is a detail that reflects a broader philosophy: precision not only in cooking, but in hospitality.
The space itself reinforces this identity. Surrounded by vintage automobiles and contemporary artworks, the dining room avoids theatrical excess, instead creating a quiet tension between industrial elements and refined design. It is a setting that mirrors the cuisine—contrasting influences brought into balance.
At Olio, the experience is not defined by spectacle, but by coherence. From ingredient selection to plate composition, from architecture to atmosphere, everything follows a clear line of thought. It is a restaurant built on precision, where the dialogue between sea and land, tradition and modernity, is expressed with clarity and restraint.
Address: Strada Provinciale 33, 21040 Origgio VA, Italy
Phone: +39 02 8362 0900
Tano Simonato: The Essence of Taste
In a quiet residential corner, Tano passami l'olio reveals itself as a deeply personal project—one shaped by instinct, discipline, and an unwavering devotion to ingredient integrity. At its helm, Chef Tano Simonato has built a culinary identity that resists excess, choosing instead to focus on precision, lightness, and a singular obsession: extra virgin olive oil.
Here, olive oil is not a finishing touch. It is the foundation. It replaces butter, guides textures, and defines balance, becoming a medium through which each dish is constructed. This philosophy, developed over years of exploration, reflects a broader vision—one where pleasure and nourishment are no longer opposing ideas, but coexist in harmony.
The restaurant itself mirrors this approach. Designed by architect Maria Marseglia, the space moves between classic elegance and contemporary restraint. Two dining rooms unfold on the main floor, while a more intimate cellar below offers a different rhythm, quieter, almost introspective. The atmosphere is refined without being rigid, setting the tone for a cuisine that is equally thoughtful yet unpretentious.
Simonato’s cooking begins long before the plate. His relationship with ingredients is deeply personal—he works only with products he knows, often sourced through direct contact with producers. Each element is selected with care, checked, tasted, and understood. Quality, here, is not a label but a process. His travels, from Japan to Spain and China, feed this constant search for new ideas, not through imitation, but through interpretation. What he brings back is never literal, but filtered through his own culinary language.
That language speaks in contrasts, though always controlled. A signature dish such as the reinterpretation of tiramisù—where cuttlefish and potatoes replace the expected sweetness—captures this perfectly. It surprises at first, then settles into something familiar yet entirely reimagined. Elsewhere, a saffron risotto unfolds with quiet elegance, its depth built on precision and balance, while the duck—prepared through the chef’s distinctive technique—is paired with pear and brussels sprouts, creating a refined interplay of sweetness, texture, and subtle bitterness.
The menu evolves continuously, guided less by seasons than by inspiration. It shifts subtly, almost instinctively, reflecting the chef’s ongoing dialogue with his craft. There is no desire to repeat for comfort; instead, each return to the kitchen is an opportunity to refine, to simplify, to move forward.
Dining at Tano is also shaped by presence. The chef moves through the room, engaging with guests, sharing the story behind a dish or suggesting a wine pairing that extends the experience beyond taste alone. Wine, much like olive oil, is treated as an essential element—never secondary, always part of the composition.
What emerges is a restaurant that feels deeply human. There is technique, certainly, and a clear mastery behind each plate, but it is never imposed. Instead, it reveals itself quietly, through balance, through restraint, through the clarity of flavour. At Tano passami l'olio, the act of eating becomes something more nuanced. Not a performance, nor a statement, but a continuous exploration—one where simplicity is achieved through complexity, and where pleasure, ultimately, remains at the centre of it all. There was only a brief opportunity to experience Tano Simonato’s cuisine, as he has unfortunately since closed his doors.
