Osteria Fara

A treasure of a find! Small, intimate, friendly, delicious! Ate there two nights in a row, yes, that good!
Get the Antipasta Platter for 2, the beef filet with Gorgonzola sauce (porcini mushrooms the next night were great as well!). Nice wine list with reasonable prices. Save room for dessert and a limoni afterwards! Oh, they start you off with a complimentary glass of Proseco and a small bite. Will be back, again!

So glad our hotel recommended this restaurant! Great décor, amazing food, and even better service! The bread is insanely good — during my whole meal, i watched the pro make it and put it into the fancy oven. I kept eating, they kept refilling. Ordered the seafood pasta — it was good but there were some other really yummy dishes around us that I also wanted to order, but had no more room for! We ended the night with shots of limoncello, on the house — guess that’s just how they do, and that’s cool with me

If you know the Milanese gourmet scene, you’ll agree that Osteria Fara is not up there with other more glamorous restaurants, and yet I find myself coming back for more, always being rewarded with an excellent experience and great value. I don’t usually go for menus offering a bit of everything, but the restaurant has managed to select a few well-​thought-​through entries for each section, avoiding the overwhelming clutter á-​la-​Cheesecake Factory. You have option of pizza (which I never tried), pasta, seafood and meat «secondi» (main course), and you’re always served a complimentary amuse-​bouche (usually bruschetta, or occasionally a tartine with salmon cream) and a basket of «focaccia ligure» made in house. If you don’t pace yourself, that alone might fill your belly.
I’ve ordered everything from fried seafood to artichoke salad, from «costoletta alla milanese» (which some might call schnitzel while also infuriating the Milanese who claim to have invented it) to smoked salmon with capers. Skip the schnitzel, and instead order the «spaghetti allo scoglio in cartoccio di pane al forno», which is a seafood pasta, perfectly «al dente» and then re-​cooked in the oven under a pizza dough wrapping, which is the concept of «cartoccio». Minimum order is for two people, and the waiter takes care of the splitting, serving you a mouth-​watering dish that demands to be photographed. Again, it might not be the best seafood pasta in Milan, but for € 14 p. p it’s a steal, and a mighty delicious one.
The personnel is fairly attentive for Italian standards, you’re welcomed with a glass of Prosecco if you’re waiting for the table and you won’t be in trouble if your Italian is not up to snuff. Plus, for the business travelers out there, it accepts Amex, which is somewhat of a rarity in the «Bel Paese».
The only downside is that many dishes require a minimum order of 2 people, but that’s not uncommon when you’re looking for branzino, orata (bream) or rombo (turbot) in the oven. But if you’re really THAT hungry…