Abba

Fabio Abbastista opened Abba in 2024 with a precision that belied a first venture: from the monochrome room design to the nine-course tasting menu, every element read as fully formed rather than provisional. The Michelin star awarded in November 2025, an unusually rapid recognition for a new opening, confirmed what the city's food cognoscenti had already established: Abba is one of Milan's most important openings in years.

Abbastista worked for a decade in Michelin-starred kitchens across northern Italy and a stint at Noma in Copenhagen, an influence visible in the menu's attention to fermentation, foraging, and the idea that Italian cooking's future lies not in replication but in reinvention. A winter menu might begin with a pine-infused aged butter and sourdough crackers made in-house, move through a tartare of Fassona beef with pickled elderflower capers, and build to a preparation of Adriatic cuttlefish in its own ink with fermented red onion and toasted rice.

The restaurant seats only 28. The single dining room has the quality of a gallery installation: concrete walls, a single spotlight illuminating each table, custom ceramic tableware from a Milanese artisan. The kitchen is partially open, Abbastista cooks in view, the brigade behind him silent and focused. It has the atmosphere of a performance rather than a restaurant meal, and intends to.

The wine programme is among the most considered in Milan: a 400-label list weighted toward natural and low-intervention producers, with particular strength in Slovenian and Austrian bottles alongside the expected Piedmontese canon. The non-alcoholic pairing is equally serious, housemade kombucha, herb-infused waters, and reductions that mirror the food in acidity and weight.

First Date: The intimate scale, the theatrical quality of the kitchen, and the novelty of cuisine this considered create exactly the conditions first dates flourish in, conversation that generates naturally from shared discovery.