October 2025

We were in Milan overnight to make an early flight to Belgium, staying in one of those vapid hotels close to the airport. It seemed reasonable to expect no problem getting into the city and back easily and having a nice Italian lunch. But Malpensa airport turned out to be a hell of a long way away from Milan. Plus the city’s public transit is complicated and you damn well better speak Italiano. We ended up paying over $300 for expensive taxis in and out of town, of course driven at breakneck speed.

I’ve never had such a bipolar experience about a restaurant: at first I was terrified that the Marchese being Michelin-named would give us a similar experience to what we had the night before in Bellagio. But I was relieved almost to the point of tears to find when we arrived at this place that it was informal and relaxed. It filled up quickly with 100% Italians and we both were looking forward to a really great experience unless the food was terrible.

It wasn’t. Just fairly ordinary.

Waiters were relaxed young guys who spoke colloquial English and went about their business with speedy efficiency. The lady who brought the wine barely spoke any English but was cheerful and engaging. Other tables had family groups, business people, and happy couples behaving like it was just another lunch. The room was noisy but pleasant, and I’ve started to distinguish between benign this kind of cheerful chatty noise and the shrieking and clattering you get in some upscale places in North America.

Robin had a delicious salad to start containing fruit, arugula, brie and walnuts. The dressing was vinaigrette with a bit of a sweet side to it. My beef tartare was straight tender meat with mayo/mustard on the side. Tasty and simple. Our pastas were a good carbonara for Robin and a special-looking duck ragu and orange tagliatelle for me. These were both a bit like the restaurant’s atmosphere, more or less business-as-usual. Our wine was, along similar lines, a perfectly nice chianti classico. Prices were at-expectation and certainly nothing close to the nonsense we experienced at Mistral the night before.

In a way we got lucky here, enjoying a moderate truly Italian lunch among moderate truly Italian people in this extremely Italian city. My paranoid expectation for phony formality from looking at the website didn’t materialize at all, but neither did the expectation for fabulous food at least a cut above the ordinary. I remember reading somewhere about ten years ago that the best Italian restaurants are no longer in Italy, but in New York. Anyway whatever else may exist in a city like Milan we think you could do a lot worse than lunch at Il Marchese.

Food 8.4, service 8.1, ambience 9.2, value 8.0, peace and quiet perfectly acceptable.