Restaurant in Milan, Italy
Chef-at-your-table creative Italian, no hype.
A Michelin Plate-recognised creative restaurant in a quiet Milan residential district, where chef-patron Tano Simonato cooks playful modern Italian and visits each table personally to guide wine pairings. At €€€€, it's priced alongside Milan's starred set but delivers something more relaxed and personal. Book one to two weeks out for weeknight tables; weekend slots fill faster.
If you want a special-occasion dinner in Milan where the food is genuinely creative, the atmosphere stays human-scale, and the chef actually comes to your table, Tano Passami l'Olio on Via Francesco Petrarca is worth your time. This is the restaurant for a date or a small celebratory dinner where you want serious cooking without the formality of a full Michelin-starred production. At €€€€ pricing, it sits in the same tier as heavier-hitting Milan addresses, but the experience is deliberately warmer and less theatrical — which for many diners is exactly the point.
The restaurant occupies a residential district address that filters out casual foot traffic almost entirely. The room reads as polished but not stiff: the kind of space where you notice the care put into the table settings and the lighting without feeling as though you've walked into a stage set. It's a residential-quarter restaurant in the leading sense — the visual mood is composed, not showy. That restraint carries through to the service approach, where the emphasis falls on conversation rather than ceremony.
Chef-patron Tano Simonato's approach is to reinterpret Italian flavours through a contemporary lens, treating the meal as something closer to playful dialogue than solemn ritual. The Michelin inspector's notes from 2025 single out two dishes that illustrate the register well: a tiramisù of cuttlefish and potatoes, which applies a dessert structure to savoury ingredients, and an almond cannoli filled with ricotta mousse, candied lemon, and chocolate drops served with citrus cream and almond jam. Both dishes signal a kitchen that is willing to subvert the familiar rather than simply refine it.
The creative direction here is not the cerebral, technique-for-technique's-sake style you encounter at some of Milan's more architecturally plated restaurants. It's lighter in spirit, and the flavour combinations are built to land clearly even when the concept is surprising. That accessibility is a deliberate quality, not a limitation.
The wine programme is taken seriously. The cellar is well-stocked, and Simonato's habit of visiting each table to recommend pairings personally is one of the more distinctive features of a meal here. This is not a sommelier making rounds with a tablet , it's the chef, explaining his thinking and adjusting recommendations to the specific dishes you've ordered. For wine-curious diners, it's a genuine add to the experience. For those who prefer to be left to their own choices, it is easy to politely redirect.
€€€€ price tier in Milan spans a wide range of experiences, and Tano Passami l'Olio sits at a point where the spend is justified by the quality-to-hospitality ratio rather than by trophy credentials. The 2025 Michelin Plate recognition confirms the cooking meets a professional standard, but this is not a restaurant where you are paying for a starred pedigree. You are paying for a chef who is present and engaged, for a room that feels curated rather than corporate, and for food that takes creative risks without abandoning coherence. Google reviewers rate it 4.4 across 378 reviews, which for a restaurant at this price point and in this competitive city is a reliable signal of consistent execution.
If your priority is Michelin star validation, Enrico Bartolini or Il Liberty will give you that directly. If you want the €€€€ spend to feel personal and the cooking to surprise you without exhausting you, Tano Passami l'Olio makes a stronger case.
Booking here is direct compared to many of Milan's top-tier restaurants. There is no months-long wait list and no elaborate reservation system to navigate. Standard Milan practice for a restaurant at this level is to book one to two weeks ahead for weeknight tables; weekend reservations, particularly Friday and Saturday dinner, benefit from slightly more lead time. The restaurant is at Via Francesco Petrarca, 4 in the 20123 district, close enough to the city centre to reach by taxi or on foot from the Sant'Ambrogio area.
Phone and online booking details are not listed in our current data , check directly with the restaurant or use a platform such as TheFork to confirm availability and make a reservation. Hours are similarly not confirmed in our database; contact ahead to verify service times before travelling.
For more dining options in the city, see our full Milan restaurants guide. If you're also planning where to stay, our full Milan hotels guide covers the current field. And for post-dinner options, our full Milan bars guide has current recommendations.
Creative Italian cooking at the €€€€ level has a wide reference field in Italy right now. If you're building a broader itinerary, Osteria Francescana in Modena and Uliassi in Senigallia represent the upper end of the form. For something similarly chef-driven and personality-forward, Dal Pescatore in Runate offers a family-run counterpoint. Outside Italy, Quique Dacosta in Dénia and Arpège in Paris are the clearest European peers for the playful-but-serious register Tano Simonato works in.
Closer to home in Milan, Verso Capitaneo, Il Circolino, and Moebius Sperimentale each offer their own take on contemporary cooking at different price points and with different ambitions. For the widest view of what's happening across the city's wine and hospitality scene, our full Milan wineries guide and our full Milan experiences guide are the leading starting points. For northern Italian fine dining outside the city entirely, Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler in Brunico and Reale in Castel di Sangro are worth knowing about, as is Quattro Passi in Marina del Cantone if you're heading south.
Quick reference: Tano Passami l'Olio, Via Francesco Petrarca 4, Milan , €€€€ , Michelin Plate 2025 , Google 4.4 (378 reviews) , book one to two weeks ahead for weeknights.
| Venue | Price | Booking Difficulty | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tano Passami l'Olio | €€€€ | Easy | — |
| Enrico Bartolini | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Cracco in Galleria | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Andrea Aprea | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Seta | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
| Horto | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
A quick look at how Tano Passami l'Olio measures up.
Bar seating is not documented for this restaurant. Tano Passami l'Olio is a full-service dining room at Via Francesco Petrarca 4, set up for seated table service rather than casual counter dining. If bar access is a priority for your visit, confirm directly with the restaurant before booking.
It works well for solo diners. Chef-patron Tano Simonato's habit of coming to the table personally to explain dishes and suggest wine pairings makes the format more engaging than many €€€€ rooms, where solo dining can feel anonymous. The residential setting keeps the atmosphere low-key rather than performatively social.
The chef comes to your table to walk you through the dishes and wine pairings himself — that's the defining feature of a meal here, not just a bonus. The cooking reinterprets Italian flavours through a playful, contemporary approach at the €€€€ tier, so expect creative combinations rather than regional classics. The Michelin inspector flagged the cuttlefish and potato tiramisù and the almond cannoli as standout dishes.
At the €€€€ tier, yes — provided creative Italian cooking with strong wine guidance is what you're after. You're paying for a restaurant where the chef-patron actively engages with your table and the cellar is well-stocked, not just for the food alone. If you want conventional high-end Italian without the interactive format, Seta or Andrea Aprea might be a closer fit at a similar price point.
The Michelin inspector specifically calls out two dishes: the tiramisù of cuttlefish and potatoes, and the almond cannoli stuffed with ricotta mousse, candied lemon, chocolate drops, citrus cream, and almond jam. Beyond those, Tano Simonato will advise you at the table, so it's worth letting him steer the meal rather than arriving with a fixed plan.
A week to ten days in advance is generally enough — this isn't a restaurant with a months-long waiting list like some Milan peers. That said, for Friday or Saturday evenings and holiday periods, booking two to three weeks out is sensible. The residential location on Via Francesco Petrarca means it doesn't pull the same walk-in crowd as city-centre spots.
Specific dietary accommodation policies aren't documented, but the format here — where Tano Simonato personally comes to the table to discuss the menu — gives you a natural opportunity to flag restrictions before or during the meal. At the €€€€ level with an engaged chef-patron, raising dietary needs directly at the time of booking is the practical approach.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
