Ristorante Andrea Aprea opens in the heart of Milan: a relationship between design and haute cuisine

Ristorante #andreaaprea has opened in the setting of Milan’s historic Palazzo dating back to 1871 and today home to #fondazioneluigirovati and its #museo d’Arte (Art Museum). Located at number 52 on Corso Venezia, on the top floor of the Palazzo, the restaurant was designed by #flavianocapriottiarchitetti, which also curated the #design of the #caffebistrot overlooking the secret green courtyard.
What results is therefore a dialogue between ancient and present, memory and culture, materiality and emotion: to enjoy a gastronomic and environmental experience capable of helping us discover a new era.
What results is therefore a dialogue between ancient and present, memory and culture, materiality and emotion: to enjoy a gastronomic and environmental experience capable of helping us discover a new era.
The interiors develop the rapport between expectation and delivery of the gastronomic experience with a contemporary twist, creating subtle relationships of meaning with the Palazzo’s new calling, the cultural context, the noble materials and the continuous dialogue with the works of art, among which the site-specific work created by #andreasala, “Il vestito di un riflesso” [“The Dress of a Reflection”] for the Palazzo’s tympanum stands out.

The restaurant is spread over 400 m², divided into a 210 m² dining room, private dining, cellar, entrance hall and a 190 m² kitchen. There is room for 36 diners, with eight tables arranged in the central dining room, where the guests’ eyes take in the ineffable expressive linearity of the kitchen: completely on show. The large central dining room is characterised by walls covered with ashlars made from bucchero - the characteristic black ceramic with which the Etruscans produced their vases - made to a #design chosen by Capriotti to create a line of continuity with the Art Museum which houses an important collection of Etruscan finds. The profiles were handmade by an artisan from Viterbo on the border between Lazio, Tuscany and Umbria, who works in a small kiln where the terracotta is cooked according to ancient techniques, in the absence of oxygen, which results in the characteristic iridescent black colour of Etruscan origin. A spectacular circular chandelier in Murano glass and gold leaf - designed by Capriotti and produced by Barovier&Toso using the ancient “dew” process - marks the central position of the room and dialogues with the sloping perspectives of the walls and ceiling that make the entire space a sort of proscenium from which to observe haute cuisine at work. A setting designed for the senses, a place to experience the relationship with food, between the expectation of the presuppositions and the sharing of the gustatory consequences: in a dimension of continuous aesthetic surprise, straddling intimacy and completeness.
The restaurant space allows you to look in two directions: on the one hand, the creative act of preparing the dishes can be observed through the large glass wall that separates the kitchen from the dining room; on the other side, diners can allow their eyes to wander from the “Indro Montanelli” public gardens of Porta Venezia to Milan’s symbolic buildings, such as the Museum of Natural History, Piero Portaluppi’s Planetarium and the Torre Rasini tower by the architects Ponti and Lancia, through to embracing the contemporary architecture that has redefined the city skyline.
“The project is the meeting point between Andrea Aprea’s gastronomic philosophy and my #design vision - explains #flavianocapriotti - in a perfect synthesis between two ways of understanding the theme of sensory experience: between haute cuisine and perception of space, involving sight, touch and hearing. Great importance has been given to acoustic and light-related comfort. The very issue of comfort is one of the keys to understanding, where the guest indulges in a series of sensations produced by the food and the environment. Innovation, modernity, recollection, attention to memory and tradition are the ingredients with which we have designed the spaces.”

THE #design OF THE GASTRONOMIC EXPERIENCE IN THE RESTAURANT
From the entrance hall of the Palazzo in Corso Venezia 52, you enter the garden, the #caffebistrot and Restaurant through a gallery of works from the Fondazione Luigi Rovati’s contemporary art collection. The selected works have characteristics reminiscent of the Mediterranean and Naples in particular, in homage to the Parthenopean origins of the Chef: “Mercato Ittico di Napoli” [“Naples Fish Market”] by Thomas Ruff, “Il Mare e l’Amazzone Ferita” [“The Sea and the Wounded Amazon”] by Mimmo Jodice, in a sort of prologue with strong artistic influences. From here, you can access the lift to go up to the third floor where the restaurant is located.

The space opens up into a reception area, covered with dark-stained walnut wood panelling, almost as if it were a space without boundaries, from which the guest accesses a mechanism of gradual aesthetic surprises, in the progressive unveiling of space, of its relationship between the external landscape and the set designed for the senses.

Flaviano Capriotti has designed an aesthetic frame to contain and express Andrea Aprea’s gastronomic philosophy, giving rise to meanings, a backdrop for expectations, a context to the relationship between form and substance.
The interiors of the restaurant have been designed to create a surprising cognitive pathway, in a continuous alternation between light and dark, as demonstrated by the dialogue between the black bucchero surfaces and the long glazed pathway, designed to give a sense of theatrical intensity to the space.
In the central room, measuring 210 m², the contemporary dialogues with the ancient, as if in an alchemical encounter: the walls and the ceiling slope to direct the gaze towards the open kitchen, which is the centre of the whole performance and the aesthetic counterpoint to the palatal experience.
The ceiling is made from a sound-absorbing material and consists of slats and planes without thickness which overlap with different inclinations, so that the very course of the ceiling helps break down the sound waves. Small LED spotlights are inserted in millimetric grooves to achieve precise, flexible lighting.
Stage effects dictated to create surprise and amazement create the relationship between movement and the unveiling of space, in a sequence of progressive discoveries. The materials are pure, left in their natural state, with no added decoration or colour; the textures are those of the materials themselves: wood, bucchero, plaster and stone.
The smoked oak of the floor marks a chromatic continuity interrupted only by the light shades of the common walnut used to line the entire space, which at the same time acts as a mechanism for cabinets and drawers - all concealed - designed to store the working tools for the room, creating a continuity between aesthetics and functionality that leaves no room for uncertainty or randomness. The space is completed by furnishings - all designed by Capriotti- exemplary linearity and delicacy: like the seats upholstered in caramel-coloured leather.

Two delightful trolleys on wheels designed by Capriotti for handling spirits and coffee in the room stand out: small gems of cabinet-making, they are the bearers not only of precious comfort in terms of taste, but also of a vision of service in which the #design of the gastronomic experience has found completeness.

The project as a whole does not add frills or make concessions to affectations. The space remains intact, in favouring concentration towards the experience of the senses, where the only protagonist must be the relationship between man and food, the intimacy of taste and the amazement of the gaze.

THE CAFFÈ BISTROT
Overlooking the Palazzo’s green courtyard is the #caffebistrot, for which chef #andreaaprea has redefined the canons of popular Italian cuisine through a selection of great classics.
The space - measuring 135 m² with room for 22 diners inside and 12 in the open air section - harks back to the tradition of the cafés of cosmopolitan and bourgeois Milan of the early twentieth century, to showcase the key elements of Italian cuisine, from breakfast to dinner, with a range capable of accommodating the desire for conviviality and good taste at any time.
The #design of the flows revolves around an iconic semi-circular counter in burnished brass which dictates the progression of the space and directs the guests’ gaze, always towards the green of the exteriors, whether for a quick coffee, a cocktail at the counter or a meal sitting at the tables alongside the window.
Fondazione Luigi Rovati commissioned the artist #mauroceolin to embellish the space thanks to the work entitled “Entrare nel tempo, omaggio a L.R.” [“Entering Time, a Tribute to L.R.].
The flooring is Venetian-style, designed by the architect Capriotti and made by Laboratorio Morseletto with a decoration featuring concentric circles that start from the central counter and expand outwards through a succession of nuances ranging from cream to hazelnut, from dark brown to stone grey. The selected materials - both polished basalt used for the table tops and the bar counter, as well as bronze, used as a line of continuity in the architectural details - are homages to the manufacturing and material tradition already developed by the Etruscan civilisation.
The chairs at the #caffebistrot were selected from Gio Ponti’s extensive production, in particular the Livia chair was designed in 1937 for the Faculty of Arts of the University of Padua, with a new edition produced in 2005.
The space expresses the characteristic themes of the best tradition of Milanese #design in a contemporary language, to offer guests at the Fondazione and the local public a new place where beauty, nature, good taste and savoir faire come together.

THE PARTNERSHIP WITH THE ARTISTS FROM #fondazioneluigirovati
The link with #fondazioneluigirovati is expressed by the presence of works of art from the Museums collection inside the restaurant and #caffebistrot. Some works were created for these spaces. In particular, the tympanum that overlooks the window in the restaurant welcomes the work of the artist #andreasala, “Il vestito di un riflesso” [”The Dress of a Reflection”]. Guests seated at the table will feel like they are seeing a reflection: a series of Venetian-style shapes that make up a landscape.
Other works embellishing the restaurant spaces come from the artists Thomas Ruff, Mimmo Jodice, Giulio Paolini and William Kentridge. In the #caffebistrot, #mauroceolin is the first protagonist of the project to promote Italian art developed by the Fondazione in collaboration with the Chef.
On the wall, the watercolour entitled “Entrare nel tempo, omaggio a L.R.” [“Entering Time, a Tribute to L.R.] will give way in the future to other visual interpretations in the spirit of the Fondazione.

A GASTRONOMIC PHILOSOPHY THAT INVESTIGATES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEMORY AND INNOVATION
Andrea Aprea’s cuisine aims to trigger a process of exchange between different places of experience: in the memory, in the gaze, in the sense of smell, in the palate. Time is a fundamental ingredient in this journey through the senses. Because the chef’s greatest source of inspiration is the memory: the emotions, the knowledge of the territory and culture that have forged Italian cuisine. It is the memory that creates a suspension of the present to accompany guests into another temporal dimension. #andreaaprea starts from the search for new experiences through which to define the flavour of contemporaneity. This is how, instead of the concepts of innovation and modernity, Aprea prefers to focus on the topic of contemporaneity, to define which he combines technique with experience, emotion with culture, aesthetics with precise gestures. Because what we call tradition was none other than the present of our ancestors. A present which knew how to deserve lasting attention, which has stood the test of time, of fashions, to become an absolute present and reach us - contemporaneity is, on the other hand, the ability to interpret the spirit of one’s time, and build hypotheses for the future on it.