Three guest chefs are worth the diary at Identita Golose Milano this month.
Mattia Pecis on the 17th, Moreno Cedroni on the 21st, Gianluca Gorini on the 29th, all at via Romagnosi. And a change in how the evenings are priced: the wine is no longer inside the menu.
The appeal of a hub like this is simple. You get a chef away from his own dining room, which means a little of Portofino, or the Adriatic, or the Romagna Apennines, delivered into a Milan evening without the drive. Each of the three is built differently, so they are worth reading one at a time.
17 September: Pecis and Tornaghi, 70 euro
The first pairs Mattia Pecis of Cracco Portofino with the food creator Martino Tornaghi, who works as tirmagno. It belongs to Conversazioni a Tavola, the series run with S.Pellegrino that puts a chef and a creator in the same room for a night.
One sitting, 8pm, Thursday the 17th. Not a window of arrival times. Settle that before booking an aperitivo somewhere else first.
This is the only one of the three with a published menu, which makes it the easiest to judge in advance. Almond ice cream with seasonal vegetables. Macaroni cooked in a pepper sauce with a ragu of molluscs. Grilled amberjack with courgettes done two ways. It closes on bergamot, fig and strawberry grapes.
On paper it moves between vegetables, seafood and sharper aromatics, which is a coherent line rather than a greatest-hits selection. You can tell where the evening is going before you commit.
Seventy euro a head. The official PDF is more useful than the calendar entry, because it says what is excluded: drinks, coffee and the cover. The cover is 3 euro. So the headline number is not the bill.
21 September: Cedroni comes back, 95 euro
Monday the 21st is Moreno Cedroni, bookings from 7.30pm, 95 euro, wine not included. A Monday is outside the venue’s usual Tuesday-to-Saturday dinner pattern, which tells you it is an event and not a service.
Cedroni’s own world is La Madonnina del Pescatore at Senigallia and Clandestino at Portonovo, both built on the Adriatic and both built on fish. The Milan night is a way to eat his cooking without organising a trip to the Marche around it.
There is a nice piece of history in this one. Identita Golose points out that Cedroni was the first guest chef ever to write a menu for the hub. His return has a line back through the venue’s own story, which is more than most guest nights can say.
The Milan menu was not linked from the listing when we checked. Do not assume the dishes from Senigallia travel north unchanged. Anyone with a dietary requirement should ask the restaurant for this specific evening’s menu rather than working from the coastal one.
29 September: Gorini and the truffle, 95 euro
Gianluca Gorini closes the month on Tuesday the 29th. The chef behind DaGorini at San Piero in Bagno is cooking a truffle menu in collaboration with Appennino Food Group.
Ninety-five euro, wine excluded, bookings from 7.30pm. It is the most ingredient-led of the three, and the obvious pick if your autumn is already organised around truffles.
One limit worth naming. The announcement does not say which truffle, and it does not publish the courses. Late September is early for Alba white, and nobody should be booking this as a white-truffle dinner until the species is stated. The courses are the next thing to look for as the date gets closer.
What changed in the pricing
In the announcement at the end of August, Identita Golose explained that the 70 and 95 euro levels replace the old 85 and 110 formulas, which included wine. You now choose your own drinking.
Those are not price cuts. They are a different bundle, and the arithmetic depends entirely on you.
A pairing quoted separately can land the evening above the old number. A couple sharing one good bottle will probably come out below it. Someone drinking water comes out well ahead. Ask for the pairing price when you book, and read the menu for the chosen date, because that is where any extra charges are written.
Unbundling is the honest way round, for what it is worth. The old formula charged the same wine allowance to a table of four whether or not anybody drank.
Book the night, not the restaurant
Reservations go through the specific entry in the official calendar, not through a general booking for the venue. The address is via Romagnosi 3, a few minutes from Montenapoleone, and availability depends on the date and the size of the party.
On the evenings without a guest, the kitchen runs Edoardo Traverso’s own menu, which is the resident cooking and a different proposition entirely.
For other nights in the city our Milan restaurant edit is a separate shortlist and a better starting point.
Which one to take
- The 17th if you want to know what you are eating before you go, and if 70 euro is the right size of evening.
- The 21st if you care about the Adriatic, or about a chef who has been coming to this room since the beginning.
- The 29th if truffle is the reason you are in Italy in September, and if you are willing to book on trust.
All three sit inside twelve days, so a Milan trip built around the middle of the month can take two of them without much effort.
Luxury.it perspective
A guest-chef calendar is the most honest thing a restaurant hub can do. Nobody is pretending these are the chefs’ own restaurants, and nobody is charging as though they were.
What has actually changed this autumn is the unbundling. Seventy and ninety-five without wine is a cleaner number than eighty-five and a hundred and ten with a bottle you did not choose, and it puts the drinking decision back where it belongs.
Of the three, the 17th is the one to book if you like knowing. The 29th is the one to book if you like finding out.
Related guides
Continue through the Restaurants desk, the Milan restaurant edit and the latest arrivals in Luxury Openings.
For Milan restaurant reservations, hotels and private-client planning, contact Luxury.it Concierge.
