A full San Siro
I had been to San Siro once before: university trip, Milan vs Napoli, Napoli won 2-1. I was in the home section. I told myself I would come back for the derby. That was years ago.
The Milan derby is not like other derbies. Two clubs, one city, both with European pedigrees that most clubs spend entire histories chasing. Inter and AC Milan have shared San Siro since 1947, a stadium so old and loud it feels less like an arena and more like an argument that never got resolved. They call it the Derby of Anger (Arabic commentators). The name is accurate.
I have been an AC Milan supporter since 2006. The derby at San Siro was on the bucket list. When two months in Rome aligned with the November 23rd fixture, the original flight home on the 20th quietly stopped being relevant.
The ticket came through a reseller, the match was classified as a Milan away game, which meant sitting in the Inter end. Fine. You take what you can get.
Said goodbye to Andrea at the station. Watched him from the window until he was gone. Three hours north, two nights booked, no plan beyond the stadium.
Everyone says Milan is ugly. What they mean is that it does not look like the Italy they arrived expecting, warm, golden, easy to love. Milan is grey sometimes, expensive always, built for fashion and money and industry. The Duomo sits in the middle of it like an argument you cannot win: Gothic stonework so detailed you wonder how long you have actually been looking at things. The streets are well dressed. The food, as it turns out, is serious.
Saturday night, I went to Antica Trattoria della Pesa. Old Milan, no performance. I booked the earliest seating, 7pm, and arrived at 6:55. The door did not open until 7:15. Through the glass I could see the staff still at their own dinner, unhurried, forks moving steadily, nobody checking the time. A kitchen that feeds itself before it feeds you is a kitchen that knows what it is doing. I did not mind the wait.
I ordered the vitello tonnato and then the veal Milanese. The tonnato first: cold veal, tuna sauce, capers the size of small olives. A dish that sounds genuinely wrong and is in fact a master class in what happens when you stop worrying about whether things match and start paying attention to whether they work. Then the Milanese: an elephant ear of veal, fried in butter, covering the plate. I am still thinking about it.
An ugly vitello
Sunday was the derby. I took the metro with everyone else, crowds loud in the carriages, fireworks going off outside the stadium before we even arrived. Seventy thousand people. The air smelled like sulfur and fried food and anticipation. Inside, seeing the pitch from the top of the stand for the first time, I was nine years old again in the best possible way. I was sitting in the Inter section and could not do anything about it.
When the goalkeeper saved the penalty and Milan held on, I screamed. The people around me turned and stared. I had no reasonable explanation. We won. I found a bar after, drank with Milan supporters who accepted me without needing my backstory, and took the last metro home before the city locked down.
Sunday was Ratana for lunch, before the derby. Modern Milanese classics, seven courses, wine pairing at the bar. Sat at the counter, which is always the right choice. The service was impeccable. The food was very good. It was also, somehow, a little empty, aesthetics ahead of flavour by a margin too small to prove but too consistent to ignore. Will not go back. Glad I went once.
Monday, flight in the afternoon. One meal left.
Dongio does Calabrian pasta. No pretension, no performance, no Instagram lighting. I sat down at a Monday lunch service surrounded by local bankers and corporate lawyers on their break, eating without discussion, as though this were simply what Monday is. I had pasta, bread, beef cheeks, half a bottle of Calabrian red, and tiramisu. Then an amaro. I was drunk and heavy and did not want to leave Italy. I considered, seriously, missing the flight. Then I paid and went to the airport.
Dongio
Walking through the parks between meals, I kept doing the arithmetic I had been avoiding. I was going back to a job I was planning to leave. I did not know when I would be back in Italy. I did not know what the next few years would look like, whether I would be able to flaner like this again for a while, whether the version of my life that included two months in Rome and a solo derby trip was going to be available to me.
The last thing I did before getting on the plane was finish the amaro. It tasted like something I was not ready to be done with. Most good things do.
THE SIDE
Why Milan eats better than its reputation
Milan has a food inferiority complex it does not deserve. The city operates in the shadow of Bologna and Rome for pasta, Naples for pizza, and Florence for steak, which means it is perpetually overlooked in favour of cities that are easier to romanticise. This is a mistake. Milanese cuisine is specific and serious: osso buco, risotto alla Milanese, cotoletta, vitello tonnato, and a tradition of offal eating that predates the trend by about three centuries. The city also has the best Calabrian, Sicilian, and Sardinian restaurants outside their home regions, because Milan is where southern Italians come to work. The real food city in northern Italy is not the one with the best PR. Go to the old trattorias, sit at lunch, order whatever sounds least photogenic. Milan will do the rest.
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THE REC
Dongio -- Milan, Porta Romana
Calabrian pasta in a room that has never heard of a tasting menu. Go for lunch on a weekday, sit next to people who are actually from here, and order the beef cheeks. The wine list is short and sufficient. Finish with the amaro. You will not want to leave. That is the point.
Also: if this issue made you think about how you eat when you travel, there is a field guide for exactly that. Seven chapters, one method, no restaurant lists. The best meal of your life in a new city will not be found -- it will be stumbled into. $19 at the link below.
How to Eat in a New City: samsleem.gumroad.com/l/qsekc