FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Milan: Midweek January "Solid" non-touristy dinner spot?
Old Jun 7, 2018, 10:46 pm
  #15  
Perche
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: SFO, VCE
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Originally Posted by Duke787
Bumping up this thread because it's a couple years old and not sure if the recommendations still hold.

I'm heading to Milan for a work trip this upcoming week. Have time for a couple of dinners. Looking for recommendations for really good, freshly made pasta (anything from cacio e pepe to red sauce to anything in between)


Staying at the AC Milan Hotel (due to proximity to work engagements) but can take an Uber/Taxi if needed
There are some misconceptions about eating in Italy. Each region is practically a different country when it comes to food. You eat the food of the region you’re in. You will not find the food on a menu in Parma on a menu in a restaurant in Verona. Cacio e Pepe is a Roman dish. You won’t find it anywhere else in Italy.

There is no such thing as red sauce in Italy. That’’s an American way of serving pasta. Not that there aren’t a few sauces that are red, particularly during the summer when tomatoes are in season, but it’s not red sauce. Tomatoes may be in it, but it’s not the focus of the sauce, as in marinara sauce. There is no marinara sauce in Italy. That’s an American pasta sauce.

Fresh pasta is not not a good way to look at it. Some dishes call for the pasta to be fresh and soft, so that it absorbs the sauce. Lasagna, for example is one of them. In order to blend well with the ingredients, including the sauce, which is bechamel sauce in Italy, not, “red sauce, which is milk, butter, and flour based. The dried pasta in boxes doesn’t work well with lasagna. It is distinctly inferior to freshly made pasta. Of course, if “red sauce,” is being used instead of Italian lasagna, I’m not sure if one could tell the difference.

Just like cacio e pepe is Roman food, only to be found around Rome, lasagna is from Emiglia Romagna, e.g. Bologna. If you find It elsewhere in Italy, it is probabably frozen food cooked in a microwave. Lasagna has migrated to other regions, whereas cacio e Pepe has not. But true lasagna takes a lot of labor, including making the pasta fresh, which is why it is generally only served to celebrate a wedding, a birth, e holiday, except in Emiglia Romagna. Where it is more common. You would be hard pressed to find it in Milan.

While fresh pasta is clearly better for lasagna and some other sauces, the use of fresh pasta with many dishes found in Italy would be a disaster. Fresh pasta is soft and absorbs the flavor of the sauce. It’s suited for soft, delicate, buttery sauces like Bechamel for lasagna.

You should not use fresh pasta for many/most dishes made in Italy. Pesto, an oily sauce, would be a disaster with fresh pasta, as so much oil would be absorbed that it would taste like mush. You have to use dried pasta. Chunky, meaty, and oily sauces require dried pasta that will not absorb the sause.

Forget about cacio e pepe, red sauce, and fresh pasta. Think regionally if you want to eat well. Up in the Northeastern parts of Italy near Asustria, the typical dish is gnocchi, or potato dumplings, not pasta. Move down and a little west, and you come to where there is a lot of corn, and instead of pasta, polenta rules. Heading west by car or train to Milan through the Po Valley you pass through miles and miles of rice fields, thus the typical dish in Milan is risotto, or rice.

You can find pasta everywhere in Italy, but no one should thin tkhat is all that Italians eat. It’s best to go regional. Calamari in Venice. Anchovies in Amalfi. Pizza in Naples. Risotto in Milan. Gnocchi in Bolzano.

If you want to eat well in Milan, stop thinking about red sauce and fresh pasta, the restaurants in this thread will serve you well



Last edited by Perche; Jun 8, 2018 at 12:26 am
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