Autem in Milan: Natalini's signature cuisine

Luca Natalini is in the dining room, pacing back and forth with the dishes, exchanging a few words with the customers, with a unique grace and genuine passion. Natalini has managed to build this beautiful, classic restaurant, just steps from Porta Romana, with great effort. It opened in May 2023. We've been there and will tell you what the food is, how it's served, and the menu prices.

But from Milan

Not that Natalini was a miracle born out of nowhere. Probably inheriting some of the artistic flair of his grandfather, the famous painter Carlo Maria Mariani, he left at just 14 to gain experience as a chef in various cities around the world: Paris, then Prague, Vienna, and even a long stint in Russia. Then he returned, graduated from Alma, opened his first restaurant in Langhirano, near Parma, which was devastated by Covid, and made several television appearances. Now, a few months ago, he's finally been in his own dining room, in his own restaurant.

The welcome is perfect, for the young staff, both in the dining room and in the beautiful open kitchen. Natalini, above all, leads the way, and he's already off to a winning start. We've forgotten our glasses, as usual, but he quickly pulls out a box with a set of glasses in different strengths: "An idea I stole from Ambroisie, the three-star restaurant in Paris." Natalini used to work at Arpège, another top-quality restaurant in the French capital, but the stars are also hovering over him (still very young, he was born in Pistoia in 1989).

The menu and prices of Autem in Milan

It's handwritten, every morning. The prices are high, as you'd expect in a fine dining restaurant. Spending less than 100 euros is almost impossible, unless you order at least two courses and wine. There are dishes with refined ingredients, but also simple recipes, which doesn't mean banal, on the contrary. For example, spaghetti with garlic, oil, and chili pepper with clams (30 euros) and fried courgette flowers (30). It's a cuisine that some have defined as colloquial, and they're true, in the sense that it never exaggerates to amaze, even if it often reaches great heights.

Natalini is at his best in his tasting menus. There are three: 80 (4 courses), 100 (6), and 130 (8). Four dishes, we assure you, is more than enough, and there are also various side dishes, amuse bouche, and other treats.

Luca Natalini's dishes

In the Autem menus in Milan, as we were saying, it gives its best, because some of its flagships... (Below the photo, the room is not very bright, so they are quite dark)

Let's start with the amuse bouche, which immediately give us an idea of ​​what awaits us (the puffed parmesan crust is splendid).

Then a Santa Margherita pink prawn immersed in fermented tomato water, which gives a burst of acidity and freshness to the dish.

Then comes a tender Comacchio eel, cooked in salt for a day, defatted, and smoked. The resulting eel salad is perfectly balanced in tenderness, acidity, and smokiness.

(Natalini says: “I get it from a small producer in Comacchio, who at the beginning, when we were in financial difficulty and none of the big suppliers would give me credit, brought me full crates and helped us get started.”)

The snail is from Parma and is immersed in a sort of potato foam and spinach sauce.

The spaghetti in bianco at Autem in Milan is one of Natalini's most celebrated dishes, and rightly so. Forget the idea that you're good at making spaghetti in bianco, too. Because in bianco here means something else: the spaghetti (he currently uses Felicetti's very thin ones) is served with a sauce made of plum vermouth, rice vinegar, acacia honey, mountain butter, and a bay leaf decoction. A perfect balance of acidity, bittersweetness, and fruity flavors.

Pigeon is perhaps the most difficult dish, immersed in a good roast sauce, as was once the custom, and surrounded by pieces of nectarine, to try to sweeten its strong flavour.

The desserts aren't bad, but they probably don't live up to the rest of the menu.

All this is surrounded and accompanied by loaves of piping hot, freshly baked bread, wafer-thin artisanal breadsticks, blocks of soft butter, and samples of olive oil from the Frantoio di Riva (they use the entire range, in different dishes), and Garda olive oil.

The wine

Wine is a bit of a weak point. "We're still evolving with the menu," Natalini tells us. And we hope so. Because, for now, we have six sparkling wines, seven whites, and nine reds available. The markups are sky-high. The minimum for a white is €32, for a red it's €38. And this red is an excellent Valpolicella Ca' Rugate (which, however, costs around €6-7 at the distributor).

To conclude

A truly wonderful experience, ultimately, and a pleasant evening. This isn't a given in many restaurants that claim to be gourmet, put on airs, and end up harassing the diner, treating him like the object of an experiment or the whim of the chef on duty.

Autem in Milan, via Serviliano Lattuada 2, tel 351 278 0368. Reservations here.