Sugo Milano, a retro trattoria in Milan with a trip back in time.
Sugo Milano is a very centrally located retro restaurant, 300 meters from the Duomo, although surrounded by offices, with fast and traditionally inspired cuisine.
Upon entering, the open-plan space is reminiscent of a café: Formica flooring, the Rischiatutto on display, a long string of red neon lights, a cactus-shaped coat rack, a Gino Bramieri joke book, and orange plastic refrigerators in the style of Giò. The place was almost deserted, despite it being a Saturday night.
Behind this "modern trattoria," as they call it, is a young couple with considerable experience. In the kitchen is Matteo Ceppi, 26, originally from Jesi in the Marche region, a graduate in Gastronomic Sciences from the Slow Food University in Pollenzo. He has traveled through South America and Asia, worked for a year at the Enoteca Nazionale, and was a private chef on a catamaran for the Park Hyatt. His partner, Anna Clara Caimi, comes from the worlds of fashion, marketing, and communications.
Ceppi defines his cuisine as fast haute cuisine, an oxymoron that combines refined cooking with a more agile and practical experience. The menu features around fifteen dishes. Among them, beef with tuna sauce (€15) sits alongside smoked eggplant with crunchy seeds and quinoa caviar (€14), tagliatelle with Cinta Senese ragu (€18) with spaghetti with Cetara anchovy sauce and pink prawns (€20), and chicken cacciatore (€22) with veal chops au gratin with wild herbs and horseradish mayonnaise (€22).
The food is good, sometimes very good. Highlights include the robiola, creamy with caramelized onions and crunchy agretti; the vitello tonnato, with marinated pink meat and an anchovy and caper sauce; and the rustic, unpolished tagliatelle, lovingly enveloped in ragù. The chicken has a nod to pollo in potacchio, and its flavor is the star. The eggplant, on the other hand, has a very strong and somewhat dark taste, which won't appeal to everyone.
There are two tasting menus: a three-course menu for €45 and a five-course menu for €60. The wine list is not yet available, and the red wine and the Marche Sangiovese from Fattoria San Lorenzo cost €30.
The atmosphere feels somewhat neglected, perhaps because the place was half empty. Furthermore, the service charge is €3.50 per person, so with two diners, the total is already €7 before ordering anything. Overall, the experience is charming, although the atmosphere and the service charge detract from it.