RANKING: 18.5/20
Two consecutive meals at Aimo e Nadia convinced me that this is the best “refined dining” restaurant in Northern Italy, better than the very good Le Calandre, the now declining Da Vittorio, and, inconsistent Osteria Francescana and Cracco. Only the classic Lombardian cuisine of Dal Pescatore and the original seafood interpretations of Uliassi can approach the pleasure one can derive from a meal at this Milano temple of cuisine dedicated to showcasing the best ingredients and cooking traditions of all Italy.*
I would like to thank David Kinch for bringing this place to my attention.
There are very few Michelin two to three macaroons restaurants which put such a premium on high quality ingredients. There are even fewer which combine them so intelligently, highlighting the quality of each ingredient without losing overall focus. Clean and focused cooking which respects the clarity of ingredients is indeed rare, but rarer still is the ability to make a dish look simple when it is in fact complex and well-conceived. Aimo e Nadia served my wife and I quite a few dishes which fell into this category.
DINNER AT AIMO E NADIA
One exceptional course, and a good start, was the charcuterie plate: “Le nostra selezione di salumi.” It is composed of exceptional quality culatello (di spigaroli), prosciutto and smoked guancia (di d’Osvaldo), and lardo of colonnata (di Guadagni). All are unforgettable, but perhaps the most unique taste you cannot find elsewhere is the hand cut, made in the premises, fresh salsicce: Battuta. It is served only with olive oil and integrale salt. It is a must try.
One amuse was a very fine pumpkin soup with cucumber and mostarda.
Things got more serious with the second amuse; the chickpea cream with wild orticchie, onions and black olive cream was a nod to Puglia. My wife and I have visited Puglia several times, but we have not seen this dish elevated to a grandiose status.
Another memorable starter was the very fresh Gamberi/prawns from San Remo (best in the world) with a pomegranate sorbet, a light touch of rosemary honey vinegar, a careful misting of spicy olive oil from Sienna, and a zesting of Sicilian aromatic bergamot (similar to orange).
Then there was an exceptional soup which also merits 20/20, as did the previous dish: “Zuppa etrusca con verdure dell’orto, legumi e faro della Garfagnano alle erbe aromatiche e fiori di finocchietto selvatico.”
I love Etruscan vases with long necks, and I admire ladies whose necks remind me of these vases.
The Etruscan soup was equally aesthetically pleasing and lovely. Quite a few vegetables are cooked separately, along with wild fennel, other herbs, and faro in a chick pea broth. I would have sworn that there is either butter or cream, but there is not. The soup has only vegetable broth and good olive oil.
Nearly as superlative as these dishes was the triglie (rouget). The boned rock triglie fish is baked in an herbal potato crust with capers and served with the jus of smoked scamorza cheese.
I think the restaurant uses a different olive oil for each dish that requires oil.
The pastas are fantastic.
For dinner we were served tortelli filled with castrated Piemontese beef and bone marrow. The sauce contained cooking juices, saffron, and parmesan cream.
Hedonistic!
We ordered a variety of different meat dishes to finish. The “capriolo,” venison chop, covered with bread crumbs -- a la Milannaise -- and served with potatoes and onions in a red wine-based sauce was quite good. So was the long cooked oxtail from Piemonte, served on top of potato puree and surrounded by a rich sauce, given a lift by herbal/bitter Chinato, a fortified wine from Barolo.
They also have a few exceptional artisanal cheeses. We tried two of them: granata (goat cheese from Piemonte) and an indescribably tasty gorgonzola-like cheese from raw cow milk produced in small quantities in Val Taleggio in Lombardia called “Strachitunt.”
Desserts are light and very good too. The pre-dessert was a yoghourt from non-fermented milk with pineapple juice and cucumber cubes.
The main dessert featured various textures of Granny Smith apples: fresh, dried, crisp, meringue, puree, and foam.
WINES: We started with 2000 Ca del Bosco, which was actually leesy and deep.
2011 TIMORASSO, COLLI TORTONESI, MARINA COPPI, FAUSTA
This was my first initiation to this cepage from Piemonte: Timorasso. Later I tried other producers, but could not find a wine at this level. Clean and fresh and minerally, this wine was a great match with the first few courses. It displayed wild fennel, sage, and a slightly grassy nose. The palette was lean and crystal clear, with a stony minerality in the finish. It displayed perfect balance. When tasted with the cheeses, it had developed a smoky, petroleum aroma, reminiscent of a German Riesling. 94/100
2009 N’ANTICCHIA ETNA ROSSO, NERO MASCALESE, PIETRO CACIORGNA.
I have a soft spot for the Nero Mascalese grape, grown in the volcanic soil of Mount Etna in Sicily. This wine came from 600 meters altitude old vineyards facing the north. Light in color, good examples of Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Capuccio possess the elegance of Bourgogne and the earthiness of Barolo, but they are lighter in body. This wine was a good example. It was lean and had a floral and wild strawberry aroma. It was not meaty or rustic like a Barolo, but had good nervosity and structure. It was balanced, clean, with a medium and slightly herbal finish. The dancing of a cornucopia of red fruits on the palette was most pleasing. It has 13.5% alcohol. 94/100
LUNCH AT AIMO E NADIA
Since lunch was less crowded than dinner and because we were given a corner table, I began to look around and think about the meanings of the modern paintings by the artist Paolo Ferrari.
The way modern art makes an impression is intriguing. These paintings with strong and bright colors had bothered me the night before. At lunch, however, my eyes got used to them and I felt enchanted and….hungrier!
The opposite is usually the case for high end restaurants. You can enjoy the home cooking of your osteria all the time, but very few high end restaurants satisfy you equally in the second visit.
Aimo e Nadia is one of the rare exceptions. It is maybe because the cooking is not gimmicky, fussy, “brainy” or complicated. It is complex, and clearly much thought and experimentation lies behind the dishes. Nonetheless the creations are rooted in tradition and appeal to the palate.
A different set of amuses were served for lunch: whole wheat crackers with grapefruit skin, foccacio with sun dried tomatoes and stracciatella cheese, and fried polenta and pepperoncini.
We also requested the memorable “salsiccie de mailino” of the preceding night as it was a sensory pinnacle.
Then they brought another amuse which is an antipasti on the menu: barely fried flavorful porcini mushrooms with mozzarella and blueberry cream. Some zucchini sticks, yoghourt, a dusting of coco, and fried basil complemented the dish.
Of all the dishes I tried at Aimo e Nadia this was the only combination which did not convince me. I did not see how the taste of porcini was enhanced by the rest.
But then three masterpieces followed.
Firstly, we had the best egg/Alba truffle concoction of which one can conceive: poached eggs with orange yolks, about eight grams of aromatic pico magnatum from a truffle the size of a fist, and a drizzle of brown butter. This was wimply hedonistic.
Secondly, we had a fantastic pasta, a house classic. It was a lesson on how a simple pasta cooked with three to four ingredients can make many pasta dishes look awkward and misconceived.
It was spaghettoni di grano duro, a hard durum pasta with a carefully calibrated fresh onion, pepperoncino pepper, Ligurian basil, and olive oil sauce. It had four ingredients only. It is a must try, to understand why and how great pasta is not only as great a dish as any, but also because it is inimitable and very Italian.
Thirdly, we had suckling lamb from Sardinia. The chef had cut pieces from the rack of baby lamb and wrapped them in spinach. The were seared and roasted medium rare and served alongside with some of the tenderest vegetables, like zucchini, spring onion, and radicchio braised in berry juice. The quality of the lamb was the best we have had in Italy (rarely found in France, but more easily found in Spain), and the subtle saucing showed the sophistication of the chef.
Later we have met with chef Fabio, one of the two chefs in the kitchen. In his 30s, fit, modest, and intelligent, we talked about his cooking philosophy.
He had used Hermitage wine in the sauce. He said that when he wants to make a new dish, he starts thinking about which kind of sauce he wants to make and then works out the other details.
Good saucing is a lost art and has almost disappeared because of the demise of classical French cuisine. It was a breadth of fresh air to listen to Fabio.
Knowing the quality of cheeses, we wanted to finish this great meal with cheese.
Maitre d’Hotel Nicola, who is also the sommelier, chose four outstanding cheeses for us, all different from the day before. There was a Reblochon-like cheese, a very complex, creamy and nutty Castelmagno, not from cow but from goat, a tome from Val d’Aosta, and a creamy goat cheese. They were all unpasteurized and all Italian.
WINES: We had two glasses of 12 years old Ca del Bosco that was made for the restaurant.
2009 KLAUSNER MERLOT RISERVA KOBLER SUDTIROLER
This is a bio wine from Aldo Adige. It has a floral, sweet fruit aroma. This is followed by vibrant red fruit, which is round and balanced, with bitter chocolate and earth notes in the finish. The wine has nice acidity, which is buried in fruit. It has character and is not overextracted like so many new world Merlots. It was a good match with the lamb, the porcini, and the pasta, and it did not overwhelm the truffle dish. It has 14% alcohol. 92/100
*A meal there can convince one about how an ivory tower academic like David Gilmour in his book “The Pursuit of Italy” got it wrong when he argues that the Risorgimento was a huge mistake and that Italy would govern itself better if it split up once more into a dozen city-states. If you can combine ingredients and cooking traditions in such an ingenious blend that, to resort to a cliché, the sum is bigger than the parts, and if the cuisine and the national cooking traditions is a reflection of ecology and culture, then Italy is better off if it stays unified even though its constituent parts love to quarrel all the time. It is all part of the collective unconscious and national psyche.