2017 | No. 97

Restaurants: Latteria San Marco in Milan

 

By Mitchell Davis
Photographs by Mitchell Davis

Latteria San Marco
Via San Marco 24
Milano
tel +39.02.65.97.653
closed Saturday and Sunday
around €40, including wine

Milan is a city of style, a fashion mecca, home to Armani, Prada, and Dolce & Gabbana. The latest designs aren’t only in the windows, they are on the people going about their daily lives. Wherever you are — La Scala, a local bar for an aperitivo, a grocery store to buy a lemon — you see men and women dressed as though they just stepped out of a photo shoot. Once last year, during a meeting with a banker, I had to ask if I could touch her dress. I’d never seen material that shimmered in such a way that it appeared not wet but covered with running water. “Go ahead,” she said. “Not what you Americans expect from a banker, eh?” Indeed.

A few years ago, furniture week nudged out fashion week as the most stylish and popular time of the year. Milan’s annual Salone del Mobile overtakes the city during the second week of April and attracts half a million visitors. Streets are literally transformed into a design playground-cum-cocktail party. Nondescript corners become sculptural pavilions, with some even floating on the canals of the Navigli neighborhood. (What’s this giant red fiberglass snake, where yesterday I used the recycling bins? Oh, of course, it tapers on one end into a chair.) Nightly parties spill out onto the sidewalks from storefronts that usually sell light fixtures and knobs. Once during the 2015 Salone, after a stressed and exhausting workday, I rushed to meet friends for dinner. When I arrived late, they asked why I was smiling so. “I’ve just walked by more beautiful people and more beautiful things than I thought existed in the entire world,” I said. They nodded knowingly.

So it’s ironic that my favorite restaurant, during the nine months I lived in Milan that year, the place that came to define the city for me and for many American friends, including chefs, who came to visit, was a tiny, aggressively unstylish trattoria, on an ugly block of Via San Marco. It’s known simply as Latteria, or “dairy,” after its previous incarnation.

Ten cramped tables, an ill-proportioned bar, walls and shelves scattered with tchotchkes and memorabilia, no real décor to speak of except thick napery and a feeling of artless authenticity. The toilet, located across the courtyard in another part of the building, is literally a hole in the floor. When I recommend the place, in addition to telling people to use a bathroom elsewhere beforehand, I also have to mention that the restaurant only takes cash.

Operated since 1965 by Arturo and Maria Maggi, both now in their seventies, Latteria is a neighborhood trattoria in the truest sense — small, familial, unpretentious, serving food that Italians describe as genuino. During service, Maria commands the dining room wearing a sturdy black dress and a strand of pearls, in contrast to the décor. Arturo mans the stove in a stained apron, his eyeglasses on a chain around his neck. (Before service, Maria cooks beside him in the kitchen.) Their eldest son, Marco, works the cash register and the coffee machine. Jimmy, a Chinese-Italian waiter who is fluent in English, shuffles around them.

Almost everyone seems to be a regular. I would need two hands to count the number of times someone dining at another table came over to chat, telling us they had eaten there every day for 30 or 40 years or more. Of course, in central Milan a neighborhood place attracts a certain crowd. Latteria is across the street from Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s most important newspapers, and it is not uncommon to find tables of renowned journalists discussing current events. When Miuccia Prada’s offices were nearby, I’ve heard she and her executive team lunched there almost every day.

Time and time again, the homey food at Latteria mesmerizes me with its simplicity and soul. The menu changes daily, and after more than 30 visits over the course of a year (according to my calendar) I can’t believe there are still new dishes I haven’t seen before, but they keep coming. Arturo was raised in the mountains above Carrara, in Tuscany, near the village of Colonnata — home to Italy’s best lardo, which explains the exemplary cured pork fat Latteria offers as an appetizer. Once I asked Arturo where his inspiration comes from. All he would say is, “The season.”

He is an avid gardener. On summer weekends, when the restaurant is closed, he tends more than 5,000 plants. And he fancies himself an alchemist. He has even written a book on alchemy, which he is proud to show. Arturo believes that our vegetables lost flavor and healthfulness when we stopped fertilizing the soil with manure. (You can tell he enjoys throwing the Italian phrase caca di mucca into a conversation about ingredients; it translates to something like “cow poo.”) Arturo says the fermentation of the manure produced soil rich in microorganisms, whose activity fortified the plants. If this sounds like one of the tenets of biodynamic farming, it isn’t far off. In the kitchen, Arturo tries to “rebalance the energy of his vegetables” by cooking them in silver pans, which he will also proudly show you. That a place with a squat toilet uses silver pans in the kitchen is an incongruity typical of Latteria. Another is that Arturo doesn’t cook with olive oil, believing that heat turns it into poison. On a different but related subject, he has never satisfactorily explained why the bottles of olive oil placed on the tables occasionally come from Spain — a surprise from any Italian chef but especially a Tuscan.

Certain produce from Arturo’s garden finds its way onto the menu’s long list of vegetable contorni, denoted simply with the possessive “mine.” The white chicory served with anchovy sauce is usually homegrown, the flavor and texture of both the bitter green and the fishy sauce more delicate than you would expect. The same, almost creamy anchovy sauce shows up on thinly sliced puntarelle, my favorite Italian chicory, whose nubby Martian-like green fingers afford a refreshing bitterness and crunch. A revelation were trombette, a regional variety of long, thin, dense, flavorful, bright green zucchini, cut into chunks, boiled, and smothered with a tangy mustard sauce.

One day I ordered Jerusalem artichokes, which I hadn’t seen on the menu before and which were presented unceremoniously mashed and piled on a plate. They were the most delicious I had ever tasted — sweet, nutty, complex. I asked how they were made, guessing nutmeg. But Maria said olive oil and salt, basta. That’s their recipe for almost everything. On my most recent visit Arturo proudly presented another vegetable dish that was new to me, broccoli cooked in red wine. He called it a zuppa, but it would better be described as a pile of overcooked, muddy-brown broccoli in a dull puddle. Arturo explained that he made it by cooking the broccoli in equal parts water and red wine and then dressing it with olive oil and salt. Skeptical but intrigued, my dinner companion and I tasted and devoured it. Then we ordered another.

Pastas, even in this homey environment, are homier than you might expect. They would fall into the category of family food, not for company, were they not so delicious. Rather than the pasta and sauce arriving already tossed, the sauce is spooned on top, a presentation common in the US that I have never seen anywhere else in Italy. If you don’t mix up your bowl before you eat it, Maria will grab your fork out of your hand and mix it for you. If Latteria has a signature, it is the spaghetti dressed with a lemony mince of peppers, which Arturo will make for regulars even when it isn’t on the menu. The first time I ordered spaghetti al limone, I asked for cheese. “I’ll bring it to you,” Maria said, “but you shouldn’t use it.” Lesson learned. I’ve made someone at my table order that pasta every time I’ve been back. A friend volunteered to work in the kitchen at Latteria just so she could learn how to make it. Lemon juice and zest, finely minced peppers, olive oil, salt, and a “visit of garlic.” Another primo that stands out is riso venere, “black rice,” served warm with diced fresh tomato and buffalo mozzarella. For some reason, reading it on the menu never inspired me, drawn as I am to noodles rather than rice. But when I finally ordered the black rice it also amazed me for its profound, complex nuttiness that defies its short list of ingredients. You are supposed to condiment the rice yourself with raw oil. If you don’t pour enough on, Maria will take the bottle and help.

I have enjoyed many of Arturo’s main courses. All are satisfying, but there are a few I quietly hope will be on the menu whenever I arrive. Among them, sautéed sturgeon, medallions of the dense white fish cooked through but still juicy and served with a white-wine pan sauce remarkably full of umami. I also love Arturo’s arista di maiale, roast pork, redolent with rosemary, sliced very thin, drizzled with rich pan juices and served with roasted potatoes. Arturo’s polpette, or “meatballs,” are archetypal, the pan-fried veal-and-pork mince redolent of lemon zest and cheese. And Arturo makes a deeply satisfying tortino di cipolle, or “onion cake,” that defies categorization. Resembling a dense, crustless quiche, the slab of tortino is heavy with sautéed onions so sweet I have asked if he used sugar. Nope. Just eggs, onions, Parmigiano, and salt. Maybe there is something to his alchemy? He puts the tortino in the main course category for vegetarians, I presume, but I usually order it as an appetizer.


I have made it my mission to try every cotoletta alla milanese in Milan. So far, one of my favorites is the classic served at Cantina Piemontese, where the smell of butter arrives at your table even before the thinly pounded and fried veal that hangs over the plate. Arturo takes a different approach. After you order it, you can hear him saw the veal and pound it, lightly, still on the bone, so that it retains the shape and thickness of a chop. Anyone who thinks veal is dry and tasteless is amazed when they bite into it.

Unexpected is perhaps the best way to describe Arturo’s signature main course, uova con bottarga di muggine in argento, which is always on the menu. To make it, he bakes two eggs in butter in a silver casserole — the vessel looks Indian to me — and when it comes out of the oven, he tops it with a generous grating of bottarga (cured mullet roe). If you love bottarga and what the Japanese call “sea taste,” you will love this dish. If you don’t, it’s too intensely fishy. I love the idea of “breakfast for dinner,” but am drawn to other main courses on the menu.

The biggest surprise to me has been Arturo’s calf’s liver. I am not a liver lover (unless it is chopped, Jewish-style), and I can say with certainty that I have never ordered a main course of sautéed liver in my life. But a taste from a friend’s plate of liver at Latteria one night moved me to order it the next time it was on the menu. And I can’t get the sweet flavor and delicate texture of the thinly sliced, pan-fried liver out of my mind. Why was it so delicious? I asked Arturo. It’s about the liver, he said. And how you slice it. Oh, and you can’t overcook it. The only seasoning beside salt and pepper: two leaves of sage thrown in the pan as it cooks.

I often brought groups of people to Latteria, and I quickly learned that Maria frowns on the constant sharing of dishes and passing of plates. This is not because she is not generous or proud, but because  she feels it destroys the integrity and enjoyment of the food. Nothing should mix or mingle. (When I note, jokingly, that it shouldn’t make a difference because most of the menu items have the same basic ingredients — onions, oil, herbs, and salt — she doesn’t laugh.) Reluctantly, or perhaps in defeat, she will bring share plates and serving utensils. Sometimes she even helps portion out the food. I realize that in a restaurant that serves mostly regulars, as it has done for decades, there is rarely a need to order one of everything and pass it around to taste. You’ll be back tomorrow or the next day. A friend of mine comments, “Sharing plates just doesn’t seem very Italian. For Italians, a restaurant meal is more about personal satisfaction of appetite. You order something not because it’s one of many tastes you’d like to encounter during the meal but because it’s what you really feel like eating, what will make you happy that day.” Look around you at Latteria and you’ll see many people on their way to being happy.

Desserts are not a strong point. I suspect most of the baked goods come from a nearby pasticceria, although I haven’t been able to confirm that. If you must end with something sweet, ask Maria what fruit she has. There is always applesauce, and in season there are caramelized peaches, fresh cherries, or ripe persimmons, which are even better topped with vanilla gelato. The only wine is an ordinary house red or white. The rolls are usually stale.

At any other restaurant, the trio of subpar desserts, mediocre wine, and stale bread would be enough for me to dismiss the place outright. In fact, though Milan is not exactly a wonderful food town, there are excellent restaurants that get everything right. Some are chic and stylish. Some have Michelin stars. The farm-to-table trend has taken hold. (American food is popular right now.) Nevertheless, it’s Latteria I crave, the place I kept and will keep coming back to. Those three shortcomings, rather than turning me off, add to my enjoyment of the whole experience. They contribute an essence of authenticity. Given Maria and Arturo’s age, trends in food, and the current uncertainty in the economy, Latteria is not long for this world. Their sons have told me as much. Until then, I will eat there as often as I can. And I will be better for it. ●

From issue 97

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