Don Carlos Restaurant: the new style of the Milanese tradition

“I hate feeling at home when I’m away,” said George Bernard Shaw. Giuseppe Verdi, on the contrary, was also looking for the hearth in large hotels. And he made the Grand Hotel et de Milan his home for almost thirty years. From 1872 to 1901 he occupied room 108, today 105presidential suite that bears its name. Here he lived, he died, worked in masterpieces like Otello, Falstaff and a new version of the Don Carlos, The most monumental, complex work.

And a Don Carlos The gourmet restaurant of the historic Milanese hotel is named. The Don Carlos Restaurant it’s una capsule of the time in the Wunderkammer taste signed by the Ambrosiana elite Decorator, Filippo Perego di Cremnago. A philological restoration returned it to the original project of 1993, when the Count architect transforms into the gastronomic living room with the charm of the ancient what was one of the last barberie in the center.

The staircase on the plate and in a frame

A space of about 100 square meters for a dozen tables, heated by silver candlesticks, English green velvet seats in the same shade as the coating, scarlet red applique that dispense a wadding light. It is theEnveloping Boudoir atmosphere of the nineteenth -century work stages. Almost obligatory quote: the Teatro alla Scala is a few steps away (just 674 assures who counted them) And his presence here is not only evoked, but also framed. On the walls a mosaic of portraits and sketches for costumes and scenography – copies of the author of the works in the collections of the theater museum at Scala – expression of the inseparable link between the temple of the lyric and the hotel, which made a fool Pied -à -terre to divine and divine: Rudolf Nureyev, Luchino Visconti, Maria Callas.

In this refined cell of urban decompression, the tribute to the theater returns to the work arias in the background and in the paper divided into documents. A real “culinary work” marked by dishes dedicated to the protagonists of Bel Cantofrom Callas (Corn polenta, cod, sweet and sour vegetables) to Enrico Caruso (Spaghetti with the three tomatoes and meatball filled with liver pate, Served with a wide flap fork created especially for the great tenor, who loved to collect more pasta at one time). An entire menu is consecrated to Verdi, sealed by the assence served according to the French ritual.

Identity and technicalities

The kitchen – with some extra -inter -critorial incursions – celebrates the Padano-Milanese tradition in its most emblematic dishes (the’Ossobuco in the “fashion of Milan”, for example), interpreted with Refined and complex touch by chef Francesco Potenza under the supervision of the Michelin two stars Gennaro Esposito. The service in the Sala Squaderna High school technicalities with the finishes of many dishes at the table (Pithivier And Casoncello).

The cellar within the Roman walls

Very studied, the wine list boasts a valuable collection of over 400 labels – Italian and international – preserved in the Historical cellar, custodian of an extraordinary testimony of Roman architecture: the remains of the defensive walls of ancient Mediolanumerected in the third century AD at the time of Emperor Maximian and brought to light during an important renovation in the nineties of the last century.

Intimate, romantic, almost secret address, The Don Carlos restaurant is open only in the evening. In summer – parentheses of enchanted suspension – you dinner in the candlelit alley.