Norbert Niederkofler has bought his cuisine to Milan, quite an exciting opening for the city. He is thinking always about the environment and has a strong stance on this throughout all his restaurants. The ingredients are local, the kitchen is zero waste in all the sense of the phrase, the fish are exclusively ‘lake fish,’ water is never bottled, and we are even going as far as the interiors here, they are made from reclaimed materials. It sounds special, but it is what we all should be doing and thinking about naturally. This is obviously good for the entire planet.
I did find the location of his Milan outpost slightly out of touch. The restaurant is in a shared building on a high floor with plenty of natural light (perfect for lunch) but come evening I would find this cold and a bit random. As I sat peering at the menu, I was adamant that I would try to keep the portion size down today, it must be vegetables and maybe some kind of pasta dish. Well, this backfired because the chef kindly gave to me some extra courses within my course to try which I am grateful for! So much for the waistline today… Tomorrow then.
The welcome snacks arrived and the bread and butter before we even entered into the mains. The butter is a dangerous one, so smooth and more like the texture of a light whipped cream, so easy to just devour the whole thing in minutes, but I didn’t, I stopped myself. So, I thought I was doing myself a big favour by choosing seasonal vegetables. What can be heavy about this? I am being healthy with this course, without a doubt. To be fair this was a nice idea, a collection of vegetable courses were elegantly placed upon my table and the waiter announced, “The chef offered a few extra ones for you.” “Oh, thank you!” I replied. This was kind. It was a vegetable extravaganza for a lunch, and everything looked colourful and inviting. I went in for one dish and worked my way around them all, taking small bites of each. Some were heavier than others such as the mushrooms, but this suited the dish with its creamy sauce. The vegetables were displayed in their truest form, the textures all working within the flavours of each. I enjoyed them all, even the salad!
I naturally ordered a pasta dish for afterwards, thinking that the beginning was going to be light, oh well too late now, isn’t it? This was the fusilli alla carbonara di Montagna (Fusilli with ‘carbonara tirolese’ sauce.) This was an excellent version of the carbonara, the pasta itself was one of the best fusilli I had come across, still al denté (Of course) I mixed everything together as advised and surprisingly it had a pleasant lightness and richness at the same time. It was not as heavy as your usual carbonara. I could eat that all over again at another sitting, it was very good and precise. There was absolutely no room for anything else, I was shown the dessert trolley, but I had to decline, “not today!.”
