Nobu Milano (Milan, ITALY) ★★★☆☆

It's been a long while since I last waited in front of a restaurant while precious seconds ticked away. But such was the case this afternoon when we stood in front of Nobu Milano's doorway. We were roughly 15 minutes early for our lunch booking and had to patiently let it tick down to 12:30pm (unfortunately, no bar or waiting area available), the official opening hour of the restaurant.



Hidden inside the Emporio Armani store overlooking the peaceful Via Pisoni area, Nobu Milano is one of the many upscale restaurants under Japanese celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa's culinary empire which now covers almost every continent in the world (except South America).



Nobu Milano sports an interior decor that is both elegant and laid-back. The combination of wood and velvet dining chairs evokes a great sense of warmth and comfort.



The two storey restaurant has a bar and casual dining area on the ground floor...



.....and a slightly more formal dining room along with a series of sushi bar on the mezzanine floor.



We have an action packed afternoon ahead of us so instead of something sophisticated, we all went with Nobu's in-out box (33 euro), the chef's take on a deluxe Japanese bento box.

This is a really well portioned bento box with a variety of small dishes highlighted by chef Matsuhisa's signature black cod with miso.



Other dishes include some rock shrimp tempura with ponzu sauce, sashimi salad with Matsuhisa dressing, vegetables with spicy garlic, some sushi and sushi rolls. Like I said, the portion was pretty generous and I like the fact that it has a lot of vegetables in it.



Some said a summer trip to Milan is not done until you have your zucchini flowers so I knew I needed to get this one out of the way quickly. This zucchini flowers tempura and anchovies with tabbouleh sauce (18 euro) was very tasty. I really liked the way they served it with the anchovy wrapped around by the deep-fried zucchini flower. The light batter of the tempura was spot on and the tabbouleh sauce was a surprisingly nice touch. (The zucchini flower season is a very short one so hurry and enjoy!)



We were going to skip dessert but then, we changed our mind.



I thought the green tea sphere with mascarpone cheese and raspberry confit (15 euro) was fairly decent. Was expecting a little more green tea flavors in there but as it turned out, only the half-sphere was green tea.



Nobu's new-style Japanese cuisine redefined with South American flavors is heavily based on chef Matsuhisa's travel in Peru, Argentina and around the world. We got a glimpse of that during lunch today and I have a feeling we may get another crack at it later this year when we travel to Dubai.



Food Rating: 5.5/10
Price: €€€
Address: Via Gastone Pisoni 1, 20121 Milan, Italy
Tel: +39 02 6231-2645
Website: www.noburestaurants.com/milan