Cotoletta alla milanese is Milan's defining veal dish: a bone-in veal rib chop, pounded thin, breaded in egg and breadcrumb, and deep-fried in clarified butter to a golden crust.
Where to eat it: 5 restaurants across 1 city.
The cotoletta alla milanese is first recorded in 1134 in a Sant'Ambrogio cathedral banquet manuscript as lumbolos cum panicio, and codified in modern form by Felice Luraschi in 1829. The famed Austro-Hungarian Wiener Schnitzel theory (Marshal Radetzky took the recipe to Vienna in 1857) is now contested; the Milanese version uses bone-in veal, the Viennese boneless. The bone-in 'orecchio di elefante' shape (the elephant ear) is the modern canonical form, pounded thin and the size of the plate. Trattoria Masuelli San Marco, Da Giacomo and Trattoria della Trebbia serve canonical versions; Cracco's modern version uses high-temperature clarified butter at the precise drop point.
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Common allergens: Gluten, Egg, Dairy
Tip from the editors. The clarified butter is essential. Whole butter burns black at frying temperature; clarified butter holds the gold colour and the nutty taste.
Trattoria Masuelli San Marco in Milan's Porta Romana has cooked the Lombard canon since 1921, family-run by the Masuelli family for four generations.
OrderThe risotto alla milanese with bone marrow, the ossobuco and the cassoeula in winter.
TipBookings open ten days ahead by phone. Cash and card; the wine list runs deep on Lombard producers.
Da Giacomo in Milan's Porta Venezia is the Tuscan-seafood dining room of the Bulgheroni family, opened 1989 and a Milanese fashion-week institution.
OrderThe spaghetti allo scoglio, the cotoletta alla milanese in the orecchio di elefante form and the fritto misto.
TipBookings open three weeks ahead. The Bistrot Da Giacomo next door is the easier walk-up sister room.
Trattoria del Nuovo Macello in Milan's south-east has cooked the Lombard trattoria canon since 1927, near the old slaughterhouse. Located in Porta Romana.
OrderThe risotto alla milanese, the cotoletta alla milanese with bone in, and the ossobuco when on the carte.
TipBookings open one month ahead on the website. Lunch is the calmer service; Friday evening fills up first.
Giannino in Milan since 1899 is the historic Lombard dining room near Stazione Centrale, the family-run kitchen that has fed Milan's industrial bourgeoisie.
OrderThe risotto alla milanese, the cotoletta alla milanese and the ossobuco con risotto plate.
TipBookings open by phone or website; lunch sittings 12:30 and 13:30. The marble-and-mahogany dining room is the destination.
Savini in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele has cooked classical Lombard and Italian cuisine since 1867, the historic dining room of opera-going Milan.
OrderThe risotto alla milanese, cotoletta alla milanese and the tortelli di zucca from Mantua.
TipBookings open a month ahead. The post-Scala dinner sitting at 22:30 is when the opera crowd arrives.
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