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.