Restaurant in Milan, Italy
Creative cooking at an accessible price point.
Manna holds consecutive Michelin Plates (2024 and 2025) and a 4.5 Google rating across 856 reviews, delivering personalised modern cuisine at the €€ price tier in a minimalist dining room off the tourist grid. The bar runs as a proper late-night option with cocktails and outside tables. Booking is easy, making this one of Milan's more accessible creative-cuisine addresses.
Manna earns its two consecutive Michelin Plates (2024 and 2025) at a price point that makes it one of the more accessible creative-cuisine restaurants in Milan. At the €€ tier, you are getting personalised modern cooking in a genuinely well-designed room, without the four-figure bill that Milan's leading tables demand. If you want to explore contemporary Italian cuisine without committing to a full-blown tasting menu at Cracco in Galleria or a multi-Michelin-starred splurge, Manna is the right call. For a return visit, the bar is where the evening extends well beyond dinner service, which makes it a stronger late-night option than most restaurants in its tier.
The room at Manna does a lot of heavy lifting. The dining space is described as new, elegant, and minimalist, and the proportions feel deliberate rather than accidental: a setting designed for conversation rather than spectacle. Tables outside on the semi-pedestrianised Piazzale Governo Provvisorio catch the quieter evening atmosphere of what is a residential-leaning district of northeastern Milan, away from the tourist corridors around the Duomo or the fashion-week circuit of Brera. Inside, the minimalist styling means the food and the company take precedence over the room itself, which suits both the romantic dinner crowd and the business lunch crowd that Manna openly addresses with a faster menu format.
The bar is a genuine asset. Where many Milan restaurant bars function as a waiting area, Manna's operates as a destination in its own right: a few tables outside, a properly considered cocktail programme, and an atmosphere that sustains into the evening after the kitchen has finished its main service. For anyone already familiar with the restaurant side of the equation, this is the practical next step: arrive for cocktails, stay through dinner, or reverse the order and use the bar to extend the evening. Compared with the late-night bar situation at places like Don Carlos or the more formal settings around Acanto, Manna's bar skews more neighbourhood and less hotel-lobby.
Kitchen works in a register that Michelin's Plate designation summarises accurately: cooking that demonstrates clear culinary skill and a coherent creative approach, without the rarefied technique of a starred restaurant. The philosophy here is described as combining tradition and creativity in a personalised way, which in practice means dishes that reference the Italian canon while stepping away from pure reproduction. The Tarte Tatin stands out as a specific recommendation from the Michelin record, an unusual choice for an Italian restaurant's dessert course, and one that suggests a kitchen comfortable borrowing across borders when the result justifies it.
Faster business lunch menu is worth knowing about if you are in the area for work. It signals a kitchen that understands its clientele well enough to offer different formats without diluting the core proposition. For a return visitor, the evening tasting format, where the kitchen can personalise more explicitly, is the version that gets the fuller picture of what Manna does. If you are comparing the creative ambition here against what 28 Posti or Altriménti offer at comparable price tiers, Manna's personalised approach gives it a slightly different character: less fixed-menu rigid, more attuned to the table.
Google rating: 4.5 from 856 reviews, which is a meaningful sample size. Two consecutive Michelin Plates indicate consistent quality year-on-year, not a one-off performance. The Michelin Plate is not a star, but it signals a kitchen that is cooking at a level above the neighbourhood average. For context on what that means in Milan's competitive modern cuisine field, consider that the city also houses Osteria Francescana-alumni-influenced dining rooms and internationally benchmarked kitchens like Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in the broader northern Italy region. Manna is not competing at that altitude, but it is cooking consistently enough to hold a 4.5 across nearly 900 public reviews, which counts for something.
Booking at Manna is rated Easy. The location in Piazzale Governo Provvisorio, outside the core tourist and business districts, means walk-in availability is more realistic here than at comparably recognised venues closer to the centre. That said, for an evening visit on a Friday or Saturday, a reservation is the sensible move given the room size and local following. The business lunch format makes weekday daytime slots the most accessible for a spontaneous decision. Dress code information is not confirmed, but the minimalist-elegant setting and the Michelin Plate recognition suggest smart-casual is appropriate; treat it as you would any seriously run restaurant in Milan rather than a casual neighbourhood trattoria.
| Venue | Price Tier | Booking Difficulty | Michelin Recognition | Setting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manna | €€ | Easy | Plate (2024, 2025) | Minimalist, neighbourhood |
| Cracco in Galleria | €€€€ | Hard | 1 Star | Galleria Vittorio Emanuele |
| 28 Posti | €€ | Moderate | Not listed | Industrial-chic, Isola |
| Acanto | €€€ | Moderate | Not listed | Hotel setting, central |
If you have eaten the main dining room format once, the bar is the natural next step. Come early, have cocktails at one of the outside tables, then move inside for dinner. Or, if your schedule suits it, book the faster lunch format during the week and save the evening personalised menu for when you have more time. For a late-night extension after dinner elsewhere, the bar works as a standalone destination in this part of Milan, where the evening options are thinner than in Navigli or Brera. Cross-reference with our full Milan bars guide if you are building a longer evening itinerary. For the wider restaurant picture, our full Milan restaurants guide covers the field across all price tiers, and our full Milan hotels guide is useful if you are building an overnight stay around a dining itinerary. If you are exploring what northern Italy's modern cuisine scene looks like at higher tiers, Dal Pescatore in Runate, Uliassi in Senigallia, and Reale in Castel di Sangro represent the benchmark for what the region produces at starred level. Internationally, Frantzén in Stockholm and Maison Lameloise in Chagny offer a useful comparison for what Michelin-recognised modern cuisine looks like at higher investment levels. Manna is not in that conversation price-wise, which is precisely why it is worth knowing about. See also our full Milan wineries guide and our full Milan experiences guide for building out the full visit. And if you are looking at Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone as part of a broader southern Italy leg, the contrast with what Manna does in a northern urban context is instructive.
| Venue | Price | Booking Difficulty | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manna | €€ | Easy | — |
| Enrico Bartolini | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Cracco in Galleria | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Andrea Aprea | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Seta | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Horto | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
Key differences to consider before you reserve.
For a Michelin Plate restaurant at the €€ price point, yes. The kitchen combines tradition and creativity in a way that reads as deliberate rather than formulaic, and the value relative to starred neighbours like Seta or Andrea Aprea is hard to argue with. If a faster format suits you better, Manna also runs a business lunch menu that compresses the experience without sacrificing the kitchen's core approach.
Yes, and it is worth considering in its own right. The bar serves cocktails with tables outside on the street, making it a practical first stop before moving into the dining room. If you have already done the full dining room experience, the bar is the natural way to revisit Manna without repeating the same format.
Booking difficulty is rated Easy, and the location in Piazzale Governo Provvisorio away from central Milan's tourist and business corridors means walk-in availability is more realistic here than at comparable creative-cuisine spots. That said, evenings when the semi-pedestrianised area fills up are busier, so booking a few days ahead is sensible for weekend dinners.
The dining room is described as elegant and minimalist, which points toward smart casual as a reasonable baseline. Nothing about Manna's positioning at €€ with a Michelin Plate suggests a formal dress requirement, but showing up in beachwear would be out of step with the room. A neat, put-together outfit is enough.
At the €€ tier with two consecutive Michelin Plates (2024 and 2025) and a Google rating of 4.5 from 856 reviews, Manna delivers consistent creative cooking at a price point that undercuts most of Milan's recognised competition. For what you get relative to cost, it is one of the more straightforward value cases in the city's modern cuisine category.
The Tarte Tatin is the one dish the venue's own recognition singles out, described as a dessert worth prioritising. Beyond that, the kitchen's focus on personalised cuisine that blends tradition and creativity means the menu shifts, so trust the room's recommendations on the night rather than chasing a fixed list.
The minimalist dining room format and the outdoor bar seating suggest Manna works best for pairs or small groups of up to four. There is no documented private dining room in the venue data, so larger groups should check the venue's official channels before assuming the space will flex. For a business lunch specifically, the faster menu format is designed to handle that dynamic efficiently.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
