When we entered the restaurant, I can’t help but notice the luxurious details of the decor yet it is overall minimalist. The decadent, Studio Vudafieri Saverino-designed with the color palette of black, white and gold. The entire dining area of the restaurant has lots of light shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
There is a dreamlike sensation, where time flows slowly and you are licensed to abandon yourself to extraordinary illusions. Staff is young but extremely professional, a rare and precious plus in star awarded establishments.
Berton’s cooking style translates as a recognizable summary of great technical mastery with clean flavors and precision in the assembly of ingredients and flavors.
We nibbled delightful homemade bread and grissini, followed by a colorful assortment of amuse bouches that are takes on classic northern Italian flavors and dishes like sardines and saor, a sweet-savory tomato cake with tomato gelee, and beet root bread.
The first course of small circles of seared scallops painstainkingly placed with the equally small dots of licorice cream. The overall creamy beige color palate with touches of color from the micro herbs and sweet carrot was pretty and it was delicious from the refined sweetness from the scallop and crunchy carrot.
The next course of risotto in pizzaiola style with mozzarella water was, as I found out, the winner of Best Risotto of the year for Le Guide de l’Espresso 2017. Think of having a perfectly cooked risotto but it tastes like a pizza margherita without the basil. There’s nuanced bites of the creamy mozzarella and the sweet acid of tomato. A few bites had a strong charred crust flavor that was unexpected but really interesting.
For our main course, I had the suckling pork belly with kiwi and coffee sauce while my friends had the very pretty venison medallion, celeraic and grapes compote. The belly was textbook perfectly cooked and seasoned. The kiwi and coffee components added some needed acidity for this generally heavy dish.
Then came a parade of sweets… The pre-dessert was my ideal kind of dessert that is acidic yet sweet enough as a dessert with a touch of texture. The black lemon, orange, anise cream with lemon sorbet was glorious. It tasted like sunshine in the carbon black lemon shell with crunchy caramelized cookie and grain crumbs. The main dessert of mango and yogurt egg was very cute. The gelatin-set yogurt portion was what would be considered the egg white and the delicately mango puree was the runny orange-yellow egg yolk but spray coated in a pastel pink white chocolate to act like an egg shell. It’s great that nothing was sweet and err on the tart side. The mignardes were wonderful bonbons, mango pâte de fruit, and mini fruit tart.
At the end of the meal, we were permitted to meet Chef Andrea Berton in his kitchen. He served us an edible cocktail encased in a super thin white chocolate shell. The small rush of sweet liqueur was delightful and meeting the man behind the cuisine was an honor.
To view more photos of this visit, please view the gallery below or CLICK HERE for the photo set:[alpine-phototile-for-flickr src=”set” uid=”26389565@N00″ sid=”72157674900032877″ imgl=”flickr” shuffle=”1″ style=”gallery” row=”4″ grwidth=”1200″ grheight=”800″ size=”640″ num=”30″ shadow=”1″ border=”1″ align=”center” max=”100″]
Information:Ristorante Berton Official Website
Via Mike Bongiorno, 13, 20124 Milano MI, Italy Phone: + 39 02 6707 5801
