Enrico Bartolini al Mudec, Milano
It was a 3-star restaurant, and I absolutely enjoyed it: top-level flavour, presentation and service. I will definitely revisit, if I am in Milan.
The restaurant is located inside a newly built museum, Mudec. The decoration is very modern and contemporary, though this is more about personal taste. Since I visited in the workday night, it was not very busy, only 3-4 tables occupied and possibly the private room. I got a large table facing the outside.
The starting light bites were already impressive with oyster, light flower-ish soup, and a small bun on top of salad. I was very flattered by the bun and the sauce for the salad: if I remember correctly, the filling of the bun is Chinese mustard, and the sauce is very north-China-traditional sesame-based. For me, they did it extremely well to keep the expected flavours from my memory but lifted it up to a high-end setting.
Canapés
I would like to specifically mention they have a very large selection of tea. For me, I only drink alcohol with special someone, e.g., my date or my future partner (hello, where are you?), therefore I often ordered tea from the beginning rather than by the very end of the meal. They had at least 20 types of tea, from Japan, China, India, etc. The menu is slightly more complicated containing two sets, “Classic” or “Mudec experience”; the latter, which I ordered, looked very experimental. Also, they were happy to do à la carte choosing any dishes from both sets.
Menu
The Mudec Experience menu did not say much but all the dishes ended up being very good. I even enjoyed the orange-or-citric flavour butter for the bread. It balanced the milky and smooth butter flavour very well. Also, the presentation was cute with edible gold powder.
Butter
While for other restaurants, I often got a second seafood. The second dishes here had an interesting choice of ingredient, wild boar, combining with bitter vegetable ingredients. It was surprisingly not very heavy nor rich, because of the bitterness. The presentation was well orchestrated, brown meat and green vegetable on top of royal blue plate.
Wild boar albese, bitter almond and turnip top
The dish, Turbot in red and sea snails, was also very impressive. It had amazingly appealing presentation, first of all. The seasoning is very fruity and berry-ish, which I definitely did not expect because most restaurants will do very light seasoning on fish. However, here it was much more interesting layers of flavours.
Turbot in red and sea snails
The highlight of that night will go to another round of light bites before the main, in fact, I do not think they are listed in the menu. I got a curry and a noodle soup. The curry was cooked in a very respectful way, in a sense that it does not try to change the style or ingredients but only tweak the seasoning, so it is not too strong. Did I expect a curry in an Italian restaurant after so many “posh” dishes with “expensive” ingredients? Definitely not.
Canapés before main, Curry chicken
I also loved the noodle soup. It was served with chopsticks, which surprised me; I asked them, and they can provide a tweezer for customers who are not familiar with chopsticks. I really enjoyed their way to serve and cook signature food in their original manner but only adjust the flavours to lift them up. The soup had a very mysterious seasoning, which reminds me a temple in the deep forest.
Canapés before main, Noddle soup
The main for that night was pigeon. It had only one slide of either breast or thigh; it was cooked evenly with very consistent and attractive pink colour. At this point, I was almost full. Then, come to the dessert part. The first one is, I would say, all black. It was for a fun show without doubt. The inside is either ice-cream or sorbet, which I cannot remember very well.
Pre-dessert
Unfortunately, I was not a big fan of the final dessert, which is also the only thing I will suggest reworking a bit. It was chocolate cake of chocolate filling. To balance the richness, a separate plate was presented containing several tropical fruit-based ice-cream or seasoning. I was told take a spoon and mix the cake and the ice-cream. However, the cake is way too rich to me and the ice-cream is way too sweet.
Guanaja soufflé, salted peanut, rum pineapple, coconut vinegar and toasted sesame
One word, recommend! It was a really really good restaurant. All the dishes were well thought, and the service was in very high standard. The male waiters were all very handsome for sure, which I would definitely not complain (God, forgive me on this?).
🐼 Score: 5/5
