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Reflections on Milan Part 2

As promised a return visit to Milan was part of the second part of my week, the original visit was a few days before. In summary I remain underwhelmed. Would I go back for a holiday? Never. Would I enjoy a day back there maybe for work? Maybe.

Lets start with the good things. One of the best meals I had for a long time was in a restaurant in the suburbs of Milan called

Refettorio

Via Dell’Orso, 2, 20122 Milan, Italy

There was no menu, although it became apparent after a while that there were maybe 3 menus on offer. The 30 euro menu, a 20 euro menu and maybe a 18 euro menu. We had the largest menu. Food and wine were superb. Nothing was less than 100% here.  You may ask what was the menu? Well let me try and describe what we had.

1. Bowl of salad and separate bowl of mozzarella on the table with oil and excellent bread. We presumed this was the starter. Wrong
2. Slices of thinly cut veal with a sauce maybe like thousands island? Starter? Wrong again
3. Dessert type dish full of cold rice salad.
4. Dinner plate full of excellent risotto, cheese and tomato sauce. At this stage we all asked if this was our main course. All food was excellent but we were getting a little embarassed that we could not finish any of our dishes.
5. Spaghetti Bolognese. Again excellent.
6. Chicken and vegetables. Main course! Wrong. This was one of two main courses! We at this stage said enough……we give in…….no fish main course please……
7. Ice Cream

Wine was also excellent and I could have been fooled into thinking it was a claret.

The meal aside I found nothing to inspire me in Milan. It seemed that every street was being dug up and walking is a supreme hazard as the one place where cars do not stop are pedestrian crossings. The city seemed grubby, dirty and I saw nothing worth photographing, other than maybe standing on the tram track. Cars seemed to have no rules, overtaking,undertaking, speeding,  driving up/down one way streets, rarely stopping at pedestrian crossings, just frankly it all looked dangerous. Milan can be added to my list of places that I will not be driving in, ever.

Signs are almost absent and even somewhere like the Milan Convention Centre was not signposted. Roads all seemed designed to confuse. Cars parked at all angles in all places. If there were happy smiling faces then maybe I missed them.